After more than 600 interviews with artists and galleries, James Carter has found that the conversations often become most revealing once the recording stops. Questions about pricing, unanswered gallery emails and the cost of opportunities have helped shape Creative Flair, the platform he founded in London in 2019. What began as a blog has developed into a series of projects addressing the practical difficulties of building a career in art.
A British and Australian figurative oil painter and writer, Carter brings his own experience of making and exhibiting work to that task. Through The Public Canvas, emerging artists’ work appears on billboards in central London, reaching audiences beyond traditional exhibition spaces. Fair Signal gathers artists’ independent reviews of art fairs and open calls, while The Inner Studio offers a community for working artists. His book, VISIBLE, now in its second edition, addresses the work involved in finding an audience and sustaining a practice.
Alongside these projects, Carter’s paintings examine addiction, from gambling and alcohol to technology and the pursuit of approval. Developed during his BA in Fine Art and History of Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, which he completed in 2026, the series uses realism, symbolic objects and the language of devotional painting to question familiar behaviours. Running a platform that reaches more than 229,000 followers across social media gives his exploration of visibility and validation a particularly personal dimension.
Now based in Paris, Carter speaks to The Flux Review about the lessons behind Creative Flair, the opportunities artists can create for themselves and the challenge of protecting time to paint while building something for others.
Creative Flair began in 2019 as a blog and a series of artist interviews at London art fairs. At what point did you realise it could become something much larger than an editorial project?
Long before it looked like anything larger, honestly. Creative Flair started in 2019 as a blog. For a while that’s all it was: me writing about artists I admired, mostly late at night and powered by very strong coffee. The interviews at the London fairs came next, and they began about as glamorously as you’d expect. It was me and a friend with a phone and a tiny lav mic. We once filmed an entire interview in slow motion by accident, and the poor artist came out sounding like a philosophical tortoise.
The turning point was what happened after we stopped recording. Artists didn’t want to talk about brushes. They wanted to know how to price their work, how to get a gallery to reply, how to get seen at all. When the same questions come up hundreds of times, you realise the interviews are only the surface and the real need is underneath. That’s when I stopped thinking of Creative Flair as something to read and started thinking of it as something that could change what happens next for an artist. Becoming a limited company in 2022 was really just the paperwork catching up.
You are building Creative Flair while also maintaining your own painting practice. Does being a working artist yourself change the way you think about what other artists genuinely need from a platform?
Completely, because I’ve done all of it myself. I’ve paid the entry fee, refreshed my inbox for six weeks, and finally received the email that begins “We were overwhelmed by the quality of submissions this year.” I know that email by heart. Most artists do.
So I’m quite allergic to anything that looks good in a pitch deck but doesn’t help an artist on a wet Tuesday afternoon when they’re trying to work out what to do next. Being a painter keeps me honest. If I wouldn’t use something, or wouldn’t pay for it with my own money, it doesn’t get built. It also reminds me that studio time is the most precious thing an artist has. A platform that eats all of an artist’s painting hours isn’t helping them, however many features it has. I try to remember that on the days the platform is eating mine.
You have now interviewed more than 600 artists and galleries. After that many conversations, what do you think separates artists who manage to build momentum from those who struggle to move their careers forward?
It’s almost never talent. I’ve met hundreds of incredibly talented artists who are stuck, and plenty of perfectly decent ones who are flying. The difference is usually much less glamorous: consistency, and a willingness to be seen before they feel ready.
The artists with momentum keep turning up. They post when it feels pointless, they apply when they expect a no, and they send the follow up email everyone else is too polite to send. They treat rejection as information rather than a verdict on their worth.
The ones who struggle are often waiting. Waiting for the work to be perfect, for the right moment, for someone to discover them. I hate to be the one to break it to them, but nobody is coming. There is no talent scout hiding behind a pillar at the Affordable Art Fair, waiting to change your life. You have to make yourself findable, and then stay findable long enough for the right people to notice.
The Public Canvas takes emerging artists out of traditional exhibition spaces and puts their work onto billboards across London. What first made you want to use public advertising space as an exhibition format?
Partly frustration, partly my degree. Galleries are wonderful, but they’re mostly visited by people who already go to galleries. A billboard is seen by everyone: commuters, school kids, people who have never once described themselves as “into art”.
At Goldsmiths I wrote my dissertation on Balthus, institutional power and the politics of viewing, which is essentially about who decides what we get to look at. Once you start thinking like that, you notice that some of the most powerful viewing spaces in the city are used almost entirely to sell us phone contracts and burgers. Putting an oil painting up there instead felt like a small, slightly cheeky act of taking that space back.
Seeing an artist stand under their own painting on a London street is still my favourite part of the whole job. It reaches far more people than a private view and a bowl of crisps ever could.
With projects such as Seen In London and Art on the Streets Week, you have deliberately removed requirements around gallery representation or large social media followings. Do you think too many opportunities still reward visibility rather than the quality of the work?
Yes, and I say that as someone who wrote a book called VISIBLE, so I’m fully aware of the irony.
Visibility matters enormously, and I’ll always encourage artists to build it. But it shouldn’t be the ticket to get in. When an opportunity asks for gallery representation or a big following, it’s really asking for proof that somebody else has already said yes. It’s a bit like a restaurant asking for evidence you’ve already eaten before they’ll give you a table.
That locks out a huge number of brilliant artists who simply haven’t had their first break yet. So with Seen In London and Art on the Streets Week we took those requirements away and looked at the work. The opportunity becomes the thing that makes an artist visible, rather than a reward for already being visible. I would much rather find someone with three hundred followers and extraordinary work than book someone because their numbers look good on a spreadsheet.
Creative Flair has grown into a community, resource library, opportunities platform and membership. How do you decide what artists actually need rather than simply adding more features to the platform?
I listen far more than I build. Most of what Creative Flair does has come straight out of conversations: coaching sessions, questions in The Inner Studio, messages from artists who’ve hit the same wall. When the same problem keeps turning up, that’s my signal.
Fair Signal is a good example. Artists kept asking me some version of “Is this fair worth the stand fee?” or “Has anyone actually sold anything through this open call?” and nobody had a straight answer. So we built a place where artists can rate what they actually got back.
I’m also very willing to take things away. There’s a real temptation, when you run a platform, to keep adding bits until it looks like a Swiss Army knife nobody can fold back up. I’ve closed things before so I could put more energy into what was working. More features can easily become more noise, and artists already have plenty of noise. What they’re short of is time.
What do you think artists can achieve for themselves today without waiting for permission from the traditional gallery system?
Almost everything that used to need a gatekeeper. You can build an audience, sell directly, put on your own show, collaborate with other artists, get press and reach collectors in other countries, all from a laptop and without anyone signing it off. I’ve said before that the moment you stop asking for permission, a lot of the scaffolding falls away, and I believe that more every year.
That doesn’t mean galleries don’t matter. They do, and a good one can change an artist’s life. But waiting by the phone for one to call is a bit like waiting for a bus on a route that doesn’t exist. The artists I see doing best treat representation as something that might arrive because of the work they’ve already done, not something they need before they’re allowed to start. Galleries notice artists who are already moving. It’s much harder to notice someone standing still, politely waiting their turn.
Your own painting practice centres on addiction, including gambling, alcohol, technology and the desire for validation. Has building a highly visible platform made you think differently about those themes, particularly ambition and external approval?
I’m very aware of the irony. I run a platform with more than 120,000 followers on Instagram, and I paint a series about the desire for validation. One of the paintings is called Monument to 100K Followers, which is either admirably self aware or a cry for help. I’m still deciding.
The series borrows the language of devotional and classical painting (plinths, halos, gold grounds) and points it at the small modern altars we kneel at: the slot machine, the glass, the phone, the notification. I deliberately don’t tell you why each figure is there. You’re invited to judge them without knowing their story, which is exactly what we do to people every day.
Building something this visible has made the work far more personal. I live with metrics every single day, and I’ve had to be honest with myself about how much I let a number shape my mood. Ambition isn’t the problem. The problem starts when the approval becomes the point and the work becomes the excuse. Painting is how I keep checking which way round it is for me.
You also write very directly about the practical side of being an artist, from money and visibility to artist statements and building a career. Why do you think there is still such a gap between art education and the realities of sustaining a professional practice?
When I was little, my grandad told me that artists don’t make any money until they’re dead. As career advice goes, it’s not ideal, and it put me off art for years. I now think he had a point about the system, just not about the artists.
I’ve just finished my degree at Goldsmiths, so this is very fresh. Art education is brilliant at teaching you to think, question and make. I could write you ten thousand words on the politics of viewing, and happily would. But pricing a painting was something I had to work out on my own. Money, marketing and selling can feel at odds with the idea of art as something pure, so they tend to get left out of the room.
The result is thousands of talented graduates leaving every year without knowing how to write a clear statement, find their first collector or tell whether an open call is worth the fee. That’s the gap I write into. The practical side doesn’t cheapen the work. It’s what lets you keep making it, ideally while you’re still alive to enjoy it.
Creative Flair has grown significantly in only a few years. Has there been a point where you have had to consciously protect the original values of the platform from the pressure simply to become bigger?
Constantly. Growth brings opportunities that look lovely on paper but would quietly change what Creative Flair is. The easiest way to grow anything in the art world is to charge artists more and promise them more. There’s a whole industry built on that model, and I’ve no interest in joining it.
So I keep coming back to a few simple questions. Is it accessible? Is it judged on the work? Would I have wanted it when I was starting out, with a phone, a lav mic and not much else? If the answer to any of those is no, it doesn’t matter how big it could get.
Fair Signal was a good test. The very first decision was that it would be free, with no paywall and no paid placements, because the moment an opportunity can pay to look better, the whole thing is pointless. Bigger is only worth it if it means helping more artists, not extracting more from them.
You recently moved from London to Paris. What prompted the move, and are you already noticing any change in the way the city is influencing your painting, writing or the direction of Creative Flair?
Love and a bit of adventure. My partner Carla and I wanted a chapter here together, and it felt like the right moment to step back from London and see everything from a little distance. London is still home for Creative Flair, and I’ll be back, but the distance has been very clarifying.
I spent a big part of my degree writing about Balthus, so living in the city where he painted feels a bit like turning up at the scene of the crime. Being able to walk into the Louvre or the Musée d’Orsay on an ordinary afternoon has pulled me back towards the classical training I started with, and that’s feeding straight into the paintings.
I’ve never been a morning person, but a Parisian bakery is the strongest argument for becoming one I’ve come across. My French is a work in progress, much like most of my glazes. For Creative Flair, the move has made me think far more internationally. Fair Signal already covers the Paris fairs alongside London, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
You have already moved Creative Flair well beyond where it began. What do you now feel is missing for working artists that you would most like to help build next?
Two things, and the first has just launched. Artists are among the only people I know who regularly pay to apply for opportunities with no idea whether anyone before them got anything back. So we built Fair Signal, a free site that gives art fairs, open calls, prizes, residencies and grants a green, amber or red light based on what artists themselves report: sales against fees, the quality of buyers, how well it was run and whether they’d go back. Think of it as a review site for the art world, minus the complaints about the breakfast buffet.
The second is real rooms. So much of what artists get now happens on a screen, and I think people are hungry to be in the same space as each other. That’s why I’m putting my energy into Creative Flair Live, a full day of talks in London where artists can work through their next steps with me properly, with a workbook, a room of people in the same boat and, I promise, plenty of coffee.
Beyond that, I want to keep closing the gap between being seen and actually selling. Visibility is the start of the story, not the end.
For more information visit Creative Flair and James’s art website, also Instagram
