Making a living as an artist can be difficult, but Calgary’s Pink Door Show wants to support local artists through a new year-long incubator program.
The program brings together 30 visual artists for three seasonal exhibitions, professional development workshops and opportunities to connect with collectors and fellow artists.
Began in 2023 as a pop-up art exhibition in a home in Crescent Heights, the Pink Door Show has grown into a volunteer-driven project that helps local artists develop their careers while making original artwork more accessible to Calgarians.
Kersten Hardy Fairleigh, the show’s artistic partner and strategic director, joined the initiative in early 2025 and said she saw an opportunity to apply the business incubator model to artists trying to make a living from their work.
“It was very clear to me to see how they are very much like entrepreneurs,” Fairleigh said. “I wanted to explore this idea of bringing in an incubator program to them in the same way that we have incubator programs for all different kinds of businesses.”
Fairleigh says artists can struggle to find opportunities that allow them to earn a sustainable income, considering traditional galleries can be difficult to get into and may take a 50 per cent commission on sales, while some markets impose price limits that make it difficult for artists to cover their labour and material costs.
The Pink Door Show aims to offer another option, allowing artists to sell work at a range of prices while keeping most of the proceeds.
Stacey Walyuchow, a Calgary-based mixed-media collage artist who has participated in the show, said unpredictable sales and the rising cost of living can make it difficult for artists to maintain a creative practice while earning enough to support themselves.
“I think people often think, ‘Oh well, we can support artists by giving them exposure’ and exposure is awesome because not a lot of us have marketing budgets, but what we really need is that ability to build sustainable creative practice,” Walyuchow said.
Walyuchow has been creating mixed-media collages for about 10 years, often combining images of women, birds and animals to create narratives inspired by music, memories and life experiences.
She said the Pink Door Show gives artists a chance to meet potential buyers, hear what draws people to their work and develop relationships with collectors and other artists.
For Walyuchow, those connections give artists a chance to understand how their work resonates with others and connect with the people who choose to buy it.
“It’s such a personal, vulnerable thing to be able to create something and then put it out there and then stand there and kind of hope that somebody can relate to and actually likes it,” she said.
“When somebody decides to spend their hard-earned money on something that I’ve created, I think it’s imperative to be able to thank them, meet them and have that conversation and learn what about the piece attracted them to it and give them the opportunity to ask questions.”
The Artist Incubator Program includes three exhibitions throughout the year. The first ran Oct. 23 to 25 in Crescent Heights, with a winter exhibition planned for February and a summer exhibition planned for June at a home in Killarney.
Between exhibitions, participants will have access to workshops on pricing, branding and brand development, along with sessions on framing and finishing artwork and monthly critique sessions.
The program also emphasizes community building, with each artist committing to 50 volunteer hours over the year, helping with responsibilities such as managing exhibition inventory and producing a planned magazine.
Fairleigh said the program is designed to bring artists together and encourage them to share their knowledge rather than compete for opportunities.
“Everybody has their own unique artistic voice, and they’re not really in competition with each other because nobody can really do what anybody else can do,” Fairleigh said. “If we support each other and we come together, we’re all helping each other and raising everybody up.”
The initiative also tries to make original art more accessible to buyers.
About half of the work selected from each artist is intended to fall within a price tier of $550 or less, with artists determining what they can offer at those prices while still being fairly compensated.
Visitors can attend exhibitions without any expectation of buying artwork, and pieces sold during a show remain on display until the exhibition closes so visitors can experience the full collection.
The Pink Door Show attracted about 400 visitors in its first year, growing to 800 visitors in 2024 and over 1,400 in 2025.
Walyuchow, who grew up in Calgary, says the city’s growing arts community has encouraged her, but she hopes more accessible exhibition spaces will become available without high costs or long waits.
She said support from local residents is important to the city’s creative future.
“I think that investing in local artists, whether it’s just even attending and purchasing, I think it would just strengthen our creative identity in the city, and with what I said earlier about hoping that the art scene grows in Calgary, I think this is the only way that it will, is if Calgarians invest in Calgarians,” she said.
Organizers plan to launch an online exhibition on Oct. 27, allowing people to view and purchase participating artists’ work through Nov. 1.
More information is available at thepinkdoorshow.com
