I think niche is friend but in the end it should serve me not me it. I think it is inevitable to some degree if I am doing what I love to do. Niche, and I don’t think I am in one yet, can help pay the bills, so I hope I find my way into one, but it should not rule me. A bit like Gordon MacKenzie’s “Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace” a book in which the former Hallmark Cards guru found a way to serve the hairball while not being utterly absorbed and overtaken by it.

I have decided that so much of what I create has to do with how I feel and basically my art has always been therapy for me and maybe that’s my particular niche…I am my own niche (said the recluse from her office in the high tower— ok, it’s just the upstairs of my rented townhouse–but still)… whether that’s a salable commodity is another topic entirely.

If it’s to sell it and make money, you need a niche.

If it’s to grow as a person and enjoy what you’re doing, it’s not called a niche, it’s called a rut.

An artist or even business can have more than one niche. That may be inefficient.

If you’re not selling, do you need one?

If you don’t have one, are you working too hard?

I imagine that if you’ve got a particularly good niche, your work becomes efficient enough that you’ll have time to work outside your niche. Or, you can keep doing art primarily for yourself and not worry about it, accepting the fact that you may never be “discovered” by the market.