We all need to think outside the box!  Maybe these things will help:

1.  Make quality job number one.  Be ready for the upturn with your best work.  Grow in areas that you think will enhance your stature.

2.  When choosing a gallery, don't choose the biggest and best even if your work fits there, but choose an aggressive good gallery in which you are sure to stand out.  I recently waited weeks and weeks for a big name gallery to respond.  I might as well have tried to spit at the moon. Instead, I found a "young" gallery with good taste and a desire to succeed, and my work was in the front.  Since the work was high quality, it inspired other artists in the gallery as well.  It was the right move.

3.  Don't be afraid to discount.  Your work is still the same value in the long run, and people will appreciate it if you are honest.  Send out an e-mail blast to all your fans saying that now is a great time to buy your paintings.  When the downturn is over, their purchases will still be of great value, and you can go back to your high-water mark.  I think if you  are honest with people they will appreciate your situation and you may be rewarded.

4.  I did really well over Christmas, by opening my studio, and having really nice work available at a great price.  Now we can make it through March!!

5.  Pray!!!! When you are making work that is uplifting, works to enhance others and describes the wonderful beauty around us, God honors that appreciation and helps.  Ask God to inspire the work, and then sell it for you.

6.  Again, I would like to go back to the first point in closing.  Art is important.  We tend to think it is a luxury, but it gives people deep pleasure because beauty is the personification of hope that something grander is at work.  To make beautiful and heartfelt works is job number one. 

Many blessings.  
Gil