The art business waltz, lesson 4

Tonight's portraits are by another Englishman, Joshua Reynolds, 1723-1792 This is a self portrait. We will return to Josh Reynolds in a later post as he gave an important set of lectures and the published text of those is an important philosophical source for painters. They are the discourses of Joshua Reynolds. Images of course are from, artrenewal.org the worlds largest online museum.

I have had a major problem with my computer, I think its a virus but I am not really sure. It is filling forms and pages etc. with equal signs, I couldn't even log on to my g mail or blogger, All the while it makes that little error sound. Might be a hardware problem too, my computer was handed down to me by my 20 yer old daughter, I bought it for her when she was in the 6th grade. Its a PC and it is not very happy. If you have ever had this happen to you or know what this is, let me know. I am typing this into blogger on my daughters nice Mac.

Tonight I will continue with the posts about hunting galleries. Now you have done your research and picked out a couple of galleries you think are a good match for your talents. There are still more things you need to have in place to do this. I have discussed the business card and the bios, You are also going to need a web site.

I didn't build my own because my wife is good at that. She actually builds them for hire so she made mine.There are template programs that will allow you to build your own or perhaps you know someone who does a good job of that who would like to have a painting. I said about galleries, it is like renting an apartment, you know you are going to move. The same is true with web sites. I have had at least a half dozen built. I was the first of my friends to have a web site. My second web site was set up to do e commerce. It had all of the paintings in my inventory on it, and quoted the prices, gave sizes and described framing. It was huge and very nice, but no one bought any art from it. I think people have to stand in front of art in my price bracket and see it in the flesh with the comforting guidance of an art dealer at their elbow. I hear about artists who sell expensive art from their web sites, but it has never worked for me. My website has been an element in lots of sales though, just not the closer.

So I don't recommend you try to build an online store. Build a portfolio site, here is mine. This is the online version of the old folders of slides and paper biography's we used to drag from gallery to gallery. What a nuisance that was.


Your site needs to show a dozen or so of your best paintings. Choose them for quality not variety. You might want to print out a couple of dozen and cut them out into little playing card sized images. Lay the deck of images in front of about ten friends, skipping those who have no interest at all in art and everybody under 25. Ask then to choose the best six images and see which ones keep coming up. You might be surprised which images are the most appealing to people.When you have done this product testing, use these most popular images in the first gallery page of your new site.

Also onto this site goes, yes you guessed it! the short form bio, which comes up under the heading "artist" with a romantic looking picture of you at your easel or smoking a box pressed maduro from Nicaragua. See my site, under artist for example. You need to put your contact information on there and whatever else you think is pertinent. I would however, stay on topic. I would not put your pets, politics or anything else on your site that is not about your art. If you also train anteaters to herd cats, start a second site for that.

The web site URL should be prominently shown on your business card. It also goes onto every thing else you print, like your bios and wherever else it will get seen. You need to have all of these pieces in place and attractively done. If your website is amateurish it might keep a gallery from wanting you. DO THIS STUFF RIGHT.

I am sure you will be relieved to know there is still more stuff you are going to need for this project. Next comes framing. I will address those tomorrow night.