At university on Tuesday we had a really interesting talk by the fabulously named founder of Visual Art Trader Chris Grant Peterkin (I'll pop the link at the bottom of this post for those interested).
He was talking about how everything is moving into more internet friendly ways - including the gallery and the buying/selling of artwork. He gave examples of these exchanges and interactions between real-life galleries/art fairs and online ones. As well as proof that people view art online before buying it or going to see it in its gallery setting because their busy lifestyles stop them going to physically visit galleries and browsing for art.
Basically it really inspired me to take better photographs of my artwork to let people - myself included - avoid the intimidating and sometimes plain complicated world of galleries for a while longer.
Not forever.
Just until I know for certain that someone other than myself likes my work.
So I'm going to sign up for it - it's only £24 a year for a student account or £48 for a standard one. They also don't take commission which is obviously really good.
The site offers a kind of categorisation of art style there are only four of them - abstract, representational, semi-abstract and semi-representational. This is good for the practical reason that general, casual art buyers generally want something for their home/office and they want it to be something they like - be it a big and bright horse painting (see links to my website if interested) or a big smudge of paint that matches their curtains but also starts to look like a landscape if looked at for long enough.
Taste sure isn't simple - but knowing that galleries are scary to buy from compared to Internet shopping sure is.
Anyway waffle over - Internet shopping is the future, so I'm going to brush up on photography skills and show off a little.
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Visual Art Trader Website
Sophie, thank you for the positive review, I am pleased you found the lecture useful. A full transcript of the lecture is now available for download: http://www.visualarttrader.co.uk/news.cfm?nid=1206. You can also read more about our style categories in “Data Basing Visual Art – Establishing a Visual Record of style.” Download online from: http://www.visualarttrader.co.uk/news.cfm?nid=1205. As well as being intuitive for buyers it offers a very practical approach to learning about semiotics as well as challenging artists to think how they might define their work in an historical context. If you have any further questions about the online art market please get in touch. Hope to see you on Visual Art Trader soon. All the best, Chris.
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