fbpx

Tag: selling art

Posted on

Going pro

Bracken Fern, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

A professional artist is, by definition, one who sells art. That’s different from an amateur, or one who makes art as an avocation. Neither is inherently better than the other. There is a range of engagement, of course. There are people who never sell work, people who sell occasionally, people who sell as a side gig, and people for whom art is a full-time job.

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of people move from amateur to pro. I love watching the transition, although it ultimately takes painters out of my orbit and onto a path of their own. I’d like to introduce you to a few painters that I taught in 2023. I encourage you to follow their links to see not just the work they’re doing, but how they’re marketing.

American Eagle in Drydock, 12X16, $1159 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Patty Mabie Rich blew out of New York about five seconds after retirement, relocating to the sun-drenched sands of Myrtle Beach. If you look at her About the Artist page, you’ll see her painting in the filtered light that’s so common in central New York. Her palette has exploded in color since her move, as she thoroughly embraces the southern coastal vibe.

Karen Ames has a gilt-edged CV that included stints as the communications director for the San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Symphony, and Houston Grand Opera. I wish she’d do my marketing too, because her first solo show of paintings sold out. She’s also very larky and funny, and her painting has an edgy energy.

Eastern Manitoba River, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Linda Smiley is a principal at Saam Architecture in Boston and paints on the side. Although she doesn’t have an art website, she sells her work through ArtbyKaty Gallery in Stonington, ME. Last year she did a collaborative show with woodworker Bob Winters, where she painted inset panels for his beautiful cabinets. Low-key marketing works for her; she sold at least ten paintings at that show.

Stephen Florimbi only studied with me for one session as he negotiated the pivot from abstraction to realism. He likes painting the world of boats and boatbuilding. However, he also has an almost-obsession with the winter woods. He did a solo show at the Apprenticeshop, where he was artist-in-residence. I noticed several red dots at the opening.

“Do you ever sleep?” I asked Cassie Sano. In addition to teaching watercolor and doing regular solo shows, she has written and published three children’s books, with a fourth coming out this spring. She’s as bubbly and energetic and outdoorsy as her work.

Maynard Dixon Clouds, 11X14, oil on archival canvas board, $869 includes shipping in continental US.

Last month, Amy Sirianni stopped by my studio to pick my brain about teaching art to young kids. She’s a natural, since she has a degree in art and teaching experience. I touched base with her recently. “My class is sold out,” she told me. She’s a success with almost no internet presence.

Texan Mary Silver shows her watercolors with the historic River Arts Group in San Antonio. She has a wicked sense of humor, and her work often reflects that. She’s been studying with me on and off since COVID, and is planning on joining me in Austin for my workshop in March.

Mary and her friend Annette once stayed with me after my workshop aboard American Eagle, when their hotel room fell through. It was a terrible deal for them; they helped me empty my kitchen for demolition.

Mark Gale started studying with me as he prepared to retire and move from Wisconsin to Texas. He is my monitor at the Austin workshop. Through Park Art Project, he donates part of the proceeds from his sales to non-profits in the Austin area. He also works with Austin’s homeless population, encouraging them to make and sell art.

Becky Bense has been my student at Sea & Sky at Schoodic for many years. (She would like to take my Monday evening classes, but inevitably falls asleep before they’re half finished.) Recently she’s been interested in neurographic drawing, an approach that neatly ties together her delicate drawing and the spirituality that underlies her work.

Lastly, I would be remiss in not mentioning MP. He’s not a professional, but he sold his first watercolor painting at a fundraiser last year for $7000. (That is not a typo.) I’d suggested a nominal price of $750-shows what I know!

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

An addendum: since it’s hard to understand Linda Smiley’s collaboration with Bob Winters, here’s a photo:

Posted on

Selling art online

Tilt-A-Whirl, oil on canvasboard, $869 framed and shipped.

In the old days, you worked with a gallerist who scheduled regular openings of your work. You spent up to a year prepping for a show, spent a small fortune on frames, and then shipped or trundled them to the place. On that night, you put on your uncomfortable glad rags and put on makeup or shaved (because in those days, those were mutually-exclusive). You braced yourself for an evening eating canapes and maintaining your sobriety in the face of nail-biting nerves and plentiful, terrible wine. A smart artist turned out for his peers’ shows, too, so even the most anti-social of us might be out a few evenings a month, pressing the flesh and fervently longing for home.

Then, despite your effort and prayers, you sold one, or two, or three works. “The market is down.” “Construction on Main Street is killing us.” “We didn’t get the press we’d expected.” “There’s another opening down the street.” Then COVID came along and we forgot how to do anything in person.

The bogus art buyer is a sad function of our times.

Tell me, you really think social media is so onerous?

The overall art market is expected to contract slightly in 2023. As the economy drifts, so do art sales. NFTs are negligible, even moribund, until cryptocurrencies figure themselves out. Meanwhile, the online art market continues to expand. It had a sharp bump at the start of COVID, and has grown steadily since. This year it’s expected to reach nearly $6.5 billion US.

It does not come without its hassles, however. “I actually observed my wife has been viewing your website on my laptop,” starts one well-known scam.

This is a mild example of the countless invitations to porn I get through IG. They’re often obscenely detailed.

Then there are the bots on Instagram, which are my own bête noire. I can almost tolerate the flurry that automatically post in response to my posts, but the ones that send me porn really irritate me. They’re so bad that I’ve let my Instagram feed become almost moribund, even though it’s an excellent tool for selling paintings.

To succeed in selling on the internet, however, you’ll need two things. The first is time, and the second is some familiarity with analytics. Google Analytics, when properly set up, will tell you who is visiting your site, what they look at, where they came from, and how long they stay. (It is migrating to GA4 by July, however, so read up before you sign up.)

Give some thought to how your potential customers are going to pay you. I use Square and I like it very much, but the fees with all online payment systems are almost all the same, so choose the one you’re most familiar with. I only accept checks from people I know, thanks to the aforementioned scammers.

Analytics are an artist’s best friend. They tell you as much about your viewers as a good gallerist could in the old days.

“But I don’t want to do all that,” you say, and it’s true-it will leave you little time for actual painting. Consider a turnkey operation like Art Storefronts, Fine Art America or FASO. But do something; not having a working website in 2023 is like not having business cards was, back in the millenium.

Lastly, don’t rule out bricks-and-mortar galleries entirely. The best-run ones support your online sales. I have my own, of course, and I’m going back into a cooperative gallery this season, the Port Clyde Art Gallery. Susan Lewis Baines is a skilled and smart gallerist, so her involvement was an unqualified recommendation.

I have two seats left in my next online class, Big Shapes and Bravura Brushwork. It is on Monday nights, 6-9 PM ET, and the dates are February 27; March 6 and 13; April 3, 10, and 17. If you’re interested, email me and I’ll give you a link to register. (My classes have so much demand that I can’t have an open link to register, or it’s a free-for-all.)

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

Posted on

Bare naked in the middle of the street

The Dugs, 8X10, Carol L. Douglas, $652 framed.

This fall two of my students threw together their first commercial art shows. Karen in San Francisco sold out. That’s an unusual achievement; I’ve never done it and know few artists who have. Karen kept her prices low and invited everyone she knows, she told me.

Mark is doing a studio show as part of a holiday walk of artists in Austin, TX. On Saturday I asked him how it was going. “I’ve sold a few things,” he said.

Sea Fog over Castine, Carol L. Douglas, 9X12, $869 framed

Neither of these painters are lifelong artists who secretly nurtured genius until their Big Reveal. Mark has been painting for about two years. He started with me when I started teaching on Zoom during the pandemic. Karen came to me from Bobbi Heath’s beginner class some time last year. Both are at the phase where style and technique are starting to gel. Importantly, both are realists who understand exactly where they fit in to the continuum. How, then, did they muster up the courage to put their work out there?

Karen was motivated by space. “I had all these paintings hanging around,” she told me. That’s why I did my first show decades ago, and the result has been a career in art.

Mark told me he’s not doing it to make money, but to improve as an artist. “You need to push,” he said. “Put yourself out there, bare naked in the middle of the street. Paint in public, sign up to sell, create an Instagram account. The pressure of being seen makes you strive to do better and exposes you to artists who are better than you. You will also be surprised and comforted at seeing those who are not.”

River Light, 11X14, Carol L. Douglas, $869 unframed.

(Note that I said nothing about ‘talent’ here. It’s a spurious concept that has little to do with excellence. Genius, as Edison said, is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.)

Vulnerability is never a comfortable feeling. I’ve sometimes felt totally outclassed at shows, like a duffer who was accidentally admitted into the presence of the Big Boys. That leaves me feeling tiny and elderly and unimportant. But when I get past that, there’s almost always something I can learn from the other painters there. The trick is to drop my own defensiveness and look at their work with an open mind.

The irony is that there are very few painters who don’t also experience that insecurity somewhere, because there will always be painters who are ‘better’ than we are. I know an artist with a reputation for cockiness. I saw him over the summer at an event that’s outside his usual sphere. He was palpably nervous and uncomfortable.

Inlet, 8X10, Carol L. Douglas, $652 framed.

We all harbor the secret belief that we’re geniuses, and the cold hard light of the public square exposes all our weaknesses.

It’s true that the marketplace often rewards mediocrity and conventional thinking. That’s the story behind the 1863 Salon des Refusés, which inadvertently legitimized Impressionism. Think of all the horrid art you’ve seen in hotels and doctors’ offices. There’s the Thomas Kinkade phenomenon.

However, the marketplace is also an intelligent voice of criticism. People buy art that speaks to them. If the public square doesn’t reward you at all, you need to improve your communication skills, either with a brush or in words.

“Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success,” Edison also said. There are limits to that kind of thinking in fine art, but he wasn’t entirely wrong.

How have you conquered your fears and put your work out there to be judged?