Hardship lies ahead #1: Checklist for Artists

This post provides some CHECKLISTS FOR ARTISTS 

• thinking about the future and 
• wanting to get to grips with the basics of surviving as an artist AND an art business within the context of both Covid AND the Recession.

i.e. Neither the Coronavirus Pandemic nor the Recession are going away completely in a hurry - so it's time to tease out and get to grips with some of the practical implications for the medium and longer term.

For what it's worth I reckon it will be at least two years before we get back to normal.  Possibly three.

In the meantime people have some difficult decisions to make.

"Hardship lies ahead" is the new slogan of the Chancellor of the Exchequer - and he's absolutely spot on.

• Not all businesses will reopen
• Not everybody will have a job in the businesses that do
• Not everybody is going to enjoy the income level going forward that they have had in the past
• LOTS OF PEOPLE ARE GOING TO FEEL VERY UNCERTAIN - and lack of confidence depresses spending on art.

PLUS at some point, we'll all have to pay for the enormous bailouts which have been going on around the world - which may well mean tax increases in the longer term.

This post is about translating that context into the PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS for artists and selling art generally and providing CHECKLISTS for

• artists - this post
• future posts re.
• art societies 
• art exhibitions 
• art galleries
• art teachers

A preamble

I last wrote on this topic in The Pandemic Recession: Likely Impact on Art Sales and Artists

HOWEVER I gathered afterwards that quite a few people felt I was probably being too negative and miserable - and that "everything will be back to normal soon".

I wonder if others might also now feel it wise to revise that view?

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered one of the worst jobs crises since the Great Depression. There is a real danger that the crisis will increase poverty and widen inequalities, with the impact felt for years to come. OECD

Now that

• business closures and job losses are now being announced on a very regular basis as we begin to come out of the furlough period (i.e. closure of 8 branches of John Lewis is NOT normal! Nor is M&S reducing staff by 950 jobs.)
• businesses are talking about it taking years to get back to normal AND
• we're seeing some very fierce covid-19 spikes (i.e. second wave) around the world (notably in the USA) as people "got back to normal" much too fast and without taking appropriate precautions 
• PLUS as of today we're got local lockdowns in the UK and we're back to no more than 6 people meeting together I think it's time to get serious.

I'm really NOT being negative.

I'm essentially a really pragmatic person who likes to know the parameters of a problem - including the nasty bits!

I'm also a great believer in planning for what's coming.  Probably because I'm "cursed" by a very marked talent for being able to predict what's coming over the horizon - and a very good track record of being right. It has proved to be useful in a career (sometimes) - but there's always been a tendency to want to "shoot the messenger!" when people really don't like the message - so I wasn't surprised at all by the reaction to the last post.

I'm going to be like Chris Whitty and Dr Fauci and just keep saying what needs saying until people get it!! :)

CHECKLIST FOR ARTISTS

Just for a moment consider the following scenario - and how realistic it might be.

• Your art galleries close down - and your art gets stuck inside
• Your sales incomes dries up or reduces significantly - because fewer people are buying - because of lack of confidence in knowing how long the pandemic / recession will last
• Your regular Bread and Butter job which pays basic bills disappears - it's happening to a lot of people even if they are working for FTSE 100 employers!
• Your online platform suddenly shuts down - don't forget it's not just bricks and mortar businesses which shut down. Small entities are the ones which shut down in the last recession. Consequently all my blogs and websites are with very big hosts for a reason.
• Your partner loses their job - it happens.
• You will be living on a much reduced income - do you know how much you need to keep a roof over your head - and or how long you can last on just savings?
• BUT you haven't got a clue about....
• what you do that makes money or maximises your income and 
• which activity/activities is/are basically a self indulgent money pit

Bear in mind a lot of people have had to face this already.

So now is the time when spending some time on working this out is a really good investment. 

Otherwise life may very well come and bite you on the backside when you're not looking!

TIPS: FINANCIALS

Now is a really good time to work out the ABSOLUTE BASICS

• which income streams maximise profit for time and effort expended and 
• which represent a really poor return after you take every aspect into account.

The Banker's Guide To The Art Market

The Banker's Guide to Art is a documentary to be broadcast by the BBC later this month. The apparent aim is to take a less "reverential" view of the financial realities of art than ever before.

This is how the BBC describes the upcoming programme

Step inside a world of high art, low cunning and prices beyond your wildest imaginings. The Banker's Guide To The Art Market is a revealing, wry and rare look behind doors that are closed to most of us. Propelled by the newly rich of the financial world, London's art market has soared to historic highs.

The film deconstructs this extraordinary phenomenon and looks back over a century of the market’s twists and turns to try to explain it, talking to outspoken collector Jeffrey Archer - 'I couldn’t afford to buy my own pictures’ - maverick dealer Kenny Schacter - 'when money is introduced it brings out the worst in people' - and gallerist Nicholas Logsdail - 'You'll never go wrong, if you buy from a good gallery'. We don’t think you will look at a painting in quite the same way again…

So who are the people taking part and what have they had to say on this topic before now? Turns out they're more interesting than you might think....

Kenny Schacter - art dealer, curator, commentator

Mr Schacter has generated an article in the Telegraph today Art world is 'hotbed' of corruption, collector claims  (hence this blog post) following his appearance at the Hay Festival last week.

A photo posted by Kenny Schachter (@kennyschachter) on Jun 1, 2016 at 12:46am PDT

Schacter has accounts on but doesn't really do Twitter or Facebook - but does use Instagram (see above) so to find out what he thinks you have to follow his articles on Artnet News.

Here's a selection of his articles:

• Vice in the Art World: Kenny Schachter's Adventures at the London Auctions and FIAC
• Kenny Schachter On What's Really Going on at the Top End of the Art Market
• Kenny Schachter Gives the Dirty Details Behind the Big New York Auctions

So he basically seems to be saying:

• the level of corruption in the art world is directly associated to the level of sums involved
• dealers plant false bidders at auctions to ramp up prices for their clients
• prices announced in public for an artwork boost the reputation of artists - despite the fact the sale might take place privately for a much lower figure
• museums and galleries who know which artists are going to be in future exhibitions can capitalise on that knowledge - since shows will usually enhance the value of such artists

"Any time a lot of money crops up, hideous behaviour follows too"

• art sales are used for money laundering - people buying are not interested in the artwork - they just want to shift ill gotten gains
• as a result banks now look very carefully at deposits and withdrawals related to artwork

I assume the latter is the underlying topic for the BBC documentary given its title.

Jeffrey Archer - art collector

"Dr Syntax at auction" by Thomas Rowlandson - owned and sold by Jeffrey Archer in 2011 
at the Christie's auction: "The Jeffrey Archer Sale: Decades of Collecting"

Jeffrey Archer is of course a well known ex MP, who has a history of scandal and making money. Plus he resided at Her Majesty's pleasure for a while and has a stunning penthouse in between MI6 and the Houses of Parliament which contains his rather good art collection. He's been collecting art for over 40 years.

• He even has part of his website devoted to his art collection!
• Back in June 2011 he raised  £5,111,725 at an auction at Christie's called "The Jeffrey Archer Sale: Decades of Collecting" (click the link to see what he owned and sold). I have to say the catalogue notes make for entertaining reading! (you can see these if you click a picture and then read the notes.
• Here's a copy of the proceeds of auction.
• This is a Telegraph article about Jeffrey Archer on Jeffrey Archer on the world’s best private art galleries

Nicholas Logsdail - art gallerist

Nicholas Logsdail owns the Lisson Gallery (London, Milan, New York).

Lisson Gallery as per their website

Founded in 1967, the Gallery's list stable of artists represented include Ai Weiwei, Sol LeWitt , Richard Long, and Anish Kapoor. He's reputed to

• have been introduced to art by his uncle Roald Dahl
• be the dealer who converted Saatchi to modern art (see Art Sales: dealer who opened Saatchi's eyes)
• one of the movers and makers in the art world (see Movers and makers: the most powerful people in the art world)

Looks to me as if it will be a very interesting programme!

Selling Art Online 2016 (Part 1: Key Points)

Hiscox published The Hiscox Online Art Trade Report 2016 earlier this month.

This is my analysis of key points from their review - in an easy to digest format.

Cover of the 2016 edition of
The Hiscox Online Art Trade Report

What's happened in the last 12 months

What's happened to online sales of art?

KEY POINTS

Online is a good place to be for artists wanting to sell lower-priced art

• The online art market has grown by 24% in the last 12 months
• However it's still small segment when compared to the art market as a whole
• Sales growth is coming from NEW buyers entering the online market
• 21% (of those surveyed) in 2015 to 
• 48% of buyers expect to buy art online again in the next 12 months

Sales value

Online sales are mostly associated with artwork with a value of less than £5,000 with half being priced at under £1,000

• Online art sales are associated with the lower end of the market  
• Most online art sales are for $10,000 or less
• 49% of sales are for less than £1,000
• a further 30% of sales fall in the £1,001 - £5,000 bracket
• 80% of sales are for values under £5k
• only 10% of sales are in the £5,001 - 10,000

What do they buy?

Painters and printmakers are most likely to do well out of online sales (see my chart below)

How to afford to exhibit your art

The third article in my series of "Cost effective ideas for artists" - about How to afford to exhibit your art - is now published in the April edition of The Artist.

This summarises where you can exhibit and ways to reduce costs plus how to avoid some nasty surprises when exhibiting with galleries or your own account.

A sample of the latest article in the April edition

The article covers:

• solo exhibitions - at home or a local venue
• art group exhibitions
• commercial galleries
• maximising your income
• minimising your costs
• how to avoid nasty surprises
• PLUS it provides an exhibition expenses checklist and
• identifies the extra expenses you incur (instead of paying commission) when you run your own exhibition

I'm covering online sites for exhibiting your art in the next article in the series.

As readers will be very aware I do tend to go to - and review - a lot of exhibitions. I've also been asking questions of artists, gallery managers and owners and collecting information about different ways of exhibiting for many years now.

For more in depth information I suggest you check out the pages in the Selling Art Section of my Art Business Info website. These include:

• A Guide to Art Dealers & Art Galleries
• Alternative Options for Exhibitions
• Selling Art from Home
• A Private View Invitation

Most Revenue or Best Profit? What was the Best Place to sell Art in 2013?

This is my Annual Making A Mark Poll which aims to find out about the trends in how artists sold their art - in 2013.

I've moved it to after the end of the calendar year so that those who do their accounts on a calendar basis will know better:

• which place generated the most revenue
• which place generated the most profit

The last time I ran this poll in 2012, I split the poll in two to make a distinction between gross revenue sales ("most revenue") and net profit ("most profitable").

That's because those places which generate the "most money in art sales" are not necessarily the "most profitable" after the "cost of sales" has been deducted.

Interestingly, the fact that one place happens to be the most profitable doesn't mean to say that's where the most profit will be made - unless an artist has already identified this and is capitalising on this knowledge.

So what these polls will do is identify

• The most (and least) effective places for selling art in 2013 - in terms of which places generate the most revenue and turnover (i.e. gross sales)
• The most (and least) profitable places for selling art in 2013 - in terms of where did you generate the best profit (i.e. net profit - profit from gross sales after deduction of the cost of sales)
• Trends in selling art in the last 6 years

There are two NEW Polls in the right hand Column. Both polls have identical options. Be sure to note the distinction between 

• MOST REVENUE and 
• MOST PROFIT.

For those interested in what the results were in 2012 here are the results of these two polls and the trends observed in September 2012

• ANNUAL POLL: What's the best place to sell art in the last year?
• 2012 Poll Results: What's the best place to sell art? (Part 1) - this reveals 4 places where (1) the most money & (2) the most profit were made from selling art in 2011/12.
• What's the best place to sell art? Trends in selling art 2008-2012: (1) direct from the studio; (2) via third party galleries ad art societies.
• The Best Place to Sell Art - More Trends Trends in selling art 2008-2012: via temporary venues and online websites.

Top 30 art galleries and museums in 2011

The Art Newspaper recently published its annual review of Exhibition and Museum Attendance Fugures for 2011.  This documents the visitor numbers to art exhibitions and art galleries and museums in 2011.

Below I provide my digest and commentary on the information relating to the top museums.

The Top 30 Art Galleries and Museums in the World in 2011

The Art Newspaper determines the top art galleries and museums based on the (unaudited) visitor numbers reported by the museums to the paper.  The main problem with the numbers is that they are self-reported and not audited.  Also some museums charge - making it easier to count numbers while others have free entry.  Then there's the people like me who have "Friends" or "member" status which gets me in free as many times as I like!

The top 30 art museums and galleries in 2011, based on their self-reported annual visitor numbers, are as detailed in the list below.

This includes 

• the number of visitors, the name of the museum, and the city that the museum is located in - as per the Art Newspaper survey
• the ranked position number and a colour code (my new added value for this year) to indicate the location of the gallery or museum - as per me!

The colour coding for places enables you to see more easily where the focus of the great museums is. Following the top 30 list I have a list of the top cities.

red = Europe

blue = UK

purple = Russia / ex USSR

orange = USA & Canada 

green = Asia

1. 8,880,000 Louvre, Paris
2. 6,004,254 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 
3. 5,848,534 British Museum, London
4. 5,253,216 National Gallery, London 
5. 4,802,287 Tate Modern, London 
6. 4,392,252 National Gallery of Art, Washington 
7. 3,849,577 National Palace Museum, Taipei 
8. 3,613,076 Centre Pompidou, Paris 
9. 3,239,549 National Museum of Korea, Seoul 
10. 3,154,000 Musee d’Orsay, Paris 
11. 2,911,767 Museo Nacional del Prado Madrid
12. 2,879,686 State Hermitage Museum St Petersburg
13. 2,814,746 Museum of Modern Art New York
14. 2,789,400 Victoria & Albert Museum London
15. 2,705,529 Reina Sofía Madrid
16. 2,355,956 National Folk Museum of Korea Seoul
17. 2,288,117 Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil Rio de Janeiro
18. 1,880,104 National Portrait Gallery London
19. 1,742,970 Galleria degli Uffizi Florence
20. 1,727,192 Shanghai Museum Shanghai
21. 1,724,271 Moscow Kremlin Museums Moscow
22. 1,629,333 Tokyo National Museum Tokyo
23. 1,600,298 Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam
24. 1,598,858 CaixaForum Madrid
25. 1,500,000 Grand Palais Paris
26. 1,494,728 National Museum of Scotland Edinburgh
27. 1,485,580 Gyeongju National Museum Gyeongju
28. 1,476,505 Tate Britain London
29. 1,457,028 Musée Quai Branly Paris
30. 1,440,599 Art Institute of Chicago Chicago

From this we can conclude that if you want to see a lot of great art a "Grand Tour" of the UK and Europe might be one way to go!

I personally was very surprised to see only four American galleries and museums in the top 30 in the world.  The Art Institute of Chicago has dropped nine places while conversely the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has dramatically improved its ranking - moving up some 21 places but staying outside the top 30.

The major movers coming into the Top 30 for the first time are:

• National Palace Museum, Taipei - in to the top 30 for the first time at #7
• CaixaForum Madrid - in to the top 30 for the first time at #24

The surprising new appearance on the art scene are the exhibitions and the galleries in South America.  Brazil has been having something of an exhibition boom.  The top gallery was Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro

The top cities for art galleries

I've also reviewed which are the top cities for art - according to the Art News paper tabulation.  The names are:

• prefixed with their position in the ranking of the top 100 art galleries and museums
• plus an indication of the places gained or dropped since 2010 as a suffix

While the top four art cities remain the same, in 2011 Seoul has now replaced Tokyo in the top five following the devastating Tsunami and the aftershocks of the March earthquake off the coast of Japan.  However it should be noted that rankings of museums in Tokyo had already dropped significantly in 2010.

The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square

© Katherine Tyrrell - all rights reserved

LONDON

London - continues to have a total of nine art museums and galleries in the top 100 art galleries and museums in the world.  This is significantly in excess of any other capital city.  (I live in London and can get to all of these in under 45 minutes!).  What's also significant for overseas tourists is how many other art museums in the UK are in the top 100.

In terms of position, there's some minor jostling for position at the top end - with the Da Vinci exhibition doubtless bringing lots of extra visitors to the National Gallery.  Well done also to the National Portrait Gallery for maintaining its ranking against some of the giants!  I'm not quite sure what's going on west of Piccadilly Circus but the downgrade in rankings suggests that either the exhibition programmes of Tate Britain, the Saatchi Gallery and the RA failed to impress or the rankings went back to normal after a good year in 2009.

#3. British Museum, London (-1)
#4. National Gallery, London (+1)
#5. Tate Modern, London (-1)
#14. Victoria and Albert Museum (-2)
#18. National Portrait Gallery (same)
#29. Tate Britain (-9)
#43. Saatchi Gallery (-13)
#63. Royal Academy of Arts (-17)
#66. Serpentine Gallery (+2)

PARIS

Paris continues to have an emphasis on quality rather than quantity. I'm amazed at The Musée d'Orsay being able to hang on to the #10 slot given the impact of the renovation of its Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Galleries during 2010. The Musee Picasso is also still closed and is due to reopen in the Summer of 2013.  In the meantime the rest of us get to see rather a lot of Picasso's work which is good!

#1 The Louvre (same)
#8 Centre Pompidou, Paris (-2)
#10. Musée d'Orsay, Paris  (same)
#25 Grand Palais, Paris (?)
#29 Quai Branly, Paris (-3)
#58 Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville, Paris (-3)

NEW YORK

New York takes third place.  The late Alastair McQueen dazzled at the Met (“Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty”, a posthumoustribute by the Costume Institute) and helped in no small way to secure the #2 ranking.  Both MOMA and the Guggenheim could have done with a boost like this.

On average,more than 8,000 people a day went (in total around 660,000). The must-see show helped the Met to a record year in our survey, taking its annual total figure to more than six million, up from 5.2 million in 2010The Art Newspaper - Exhibition and mu

seum attendance figures 2011

#2    Metropolitan Museum of Art (+1)
#13  Museum of Modern Art, New York (-6)
#46  Guggenheim Musem (-7)

MADRID

Madrid retained 4th place.   The Prado stayed just outside the top ten.  The museum with the most astounding leap up the charts is the CaixaForum Madrid.  Like the UK, Spain is also stronger in the European context in terms of its representation of regional museums.

#11 Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid (same)
#15 Reina Sofía, Madrid  (same)

#24 CaixaForum Madrid (not ranked in 2010)
#61 Museo Thyssen Bornemisza (+1)

SEOUL

Seoul claims the 5th place for the first time.  Two of its three museums move into the top 100 museums.

#9 National Museum of Korea, Seoul (same)
#16 National Folk Museum of Korea, Seoul (not ranked in 2010)
#49 National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul (not ranked in 2010)

I've updated my information site about the top museums and art galleries which you can find here - Top 10 Art Galleries and Museums. 

POLL: What makes somebody buy a painting?

It constantly intrigues me as to what makes somebody want to buy one painting compared to another.  I wonder how often you also ponder on what makes artwork sell?

It seems to me as if everybody has an idea of what makes a painting that somebody will buy - but do we ever try and articulate it?

At one extreme, we can have artists who will produce paintings just for themselves "because this will never sell".  While at the other extreme we have artists who have to produce artwork that they know has a very good chance of selling because they have to keep a roof over their head, hungry mouths to feed and bills to pay.

Girl with the red hat (1667) - Johannes Vermeer
oil on canvas, 22.8 x 18 cm

Then we have people who say that paintings which make a point of featuring red will always sell (see addendum at end).  Then there's the art collectors who will buy anything by an artist so long as it's a collectable name and it's got a collectable signature - and it really doesn't matter what it is! While the art tutors are always going on about important it is to stop the eye from moving out of the painting.

So I sat down and made a list of all the things I could think of which makes people want to buy a painting.

Your Paintings

Your Paintings" is one of the most remarkable digital art projects I've ever seen online. The aim is to catalogue and display the entire national collection of oil paintings in the UK online on a dedicated website!

Your Paintings - a BBC Online 'Knowledge and Learning' project
with the PCF and participating collections

Your Paintings is a joint initiative between the BBC, the Public Catalogue Foundation (a registered charity) and participating collections and museums from across the UK. 

It's going to be a fantastic learning resource and will be of particular interest to artists and those involved in art education - art students, art teachers and home schoolers.

Importantly, it also extends the concept of what public access to our artistic heritage should be about.

The project focuses on all the oil paintings in public ownership - so my brand new efforts at oil painting won't be making the cut.  However it's not just paintings in art galleries and museums as this video shows.

The paintings are drawn from public collections in every part of the country, big and small, from the most famous to the completely unknown. They include the UK's national museums and galleries, regional collections, the National Trust, as well as the less obvious public collection like those in universities, council buildings, hospitals and fire stations. 

It actually launched while I was away, hence why I'm only writing about it now.  Read on to find out more about

• what you can see online
• how to access the project's website
• how you can get personally involved - and help by tagging the nation's oil paintings!

Selling Art Online and Site Traffic

Have you ever heard the following quotation?

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.

Being able to identify and highlight what makes the difference when you're trying to do anything really pays off long term.

One of the very famous management 'laws' is the Pareto Principle - otherwise known as the 80/20 rule. This relates to the notion that most things in life are not distributed evenly.

Knowing what really makes a difference
The balance between inputs and outputs is rarely proportional. If you want to maximise revenue, it pays to look at the 20% of what you produce that brings in 80% of the revenue.

(The Pareto principle).

The Pareto Principle suggest that 20% of the online galleries will sell 80% of the art - but is that true. Take a look at the statistics below and note the differences in site traffic. I'd ask you to note that this blog actually gets more visitors than some of the sites listed!

Statistical analysis of the traffic generated by websites providing online galleries

The following statistics are from compete.com.

• The Unique Visitors metric only counts a person once no matter how many times they visit a site in a given month. Unique Visitors are typically used to determine how popular a site is. (Note: The number of visitors to this blog are also measured as unique visitors)
  
• The Compete Rank is based on Unique Visitors and does not consider page views or number of visits made to the site. Rank is often used as a compliment to Unique Visitors to provide a relative metric that shows the significance of a site

All sites are listed alphabetically within their category.

Statistical Caveats

The main message to take away from these statistics is the relative share of traffic that each site generates and how that is changing over the course of the past year. Numbers may be wrong but it's more likely that the general size and shape of the traffic chart is about right - in relative terms.

The main caveat to the statistics and comments shown below is that there is no way of knowing whether or not they are accurate. I do think it's a pity that such websites don't publicise their stats as per any of the more reliable sites such as Google Analytics, Quantcast or Compete.com. (Note: If any website wants to dispute the numbers please leave a link to your published traffic stats.)

There could be a major discrepancy in any of the websites' statistics. That's based on the fact that this blog's statistics on compete.com are far from real (but this could be due to this blog being a subdomain of blogspot.com).

Insofar as this can be meaningful, I'll provide you with a benchmark for the the statistics you'll see below. This blog has had well in excess of 20,000 unique visitors a month in each of the last three months.

Bear in mind also that the number of visitors at any one time are spread across all the different artists with galleries or pages or stores on the website in question. So the number seeing an individual artist or artisan will be very much lower than the traffic level quoted.

The analysis of sites below are split between:

• generalist sites - where art if just one category which generates visits
  
• sites dedicated to art (and crafts)
  

GENERAL SITES

Bonanzle



Traffic is respectable and continues on an upward trajectory from 284k in Februarty 2009 to 691k in January 2010. However this is a generalist site like eBay and only a small proportion of this will relate to art and the pages of individual artists

35% of traffic arrives via Google and 13% comes from Facebook. 65% of those leaving the site go to ebay

eBay



Note that the scale is in MILLIONS of visitors. Bear in mind that the number of visitors at any one time are spread across all the different parts of eBay and the number looking at art by individual artists will be much lower than this

eBay used to be known as an auction site but it's increasingly now known as an online store site. Traffic, apart from the Christmas hike, is essentially static.

Below is the chart for the art category on eBay. Note how the numbers of unique visitors are much lower than those visiting Etsy.




DEDICATED ART AND CRAFTS SITES

ArtByUs



It's unclear whether the issue is recording of traffic or an absoluite decline in traffic. Either way monthly traffic is low and less than the traffic that this blog gets. 40% of the traffic arrives via Google and 40% of it returns to Google - suggesting that it might be stay a few seconds.

Artflock

Compete.com has no data for this site. This generally only happens when traffic is very low.

Boundless Gallery



Monthly traffic is less than this blog and has reduced from 18.7k to 13.8k

27% of visitors come from Google; 10% come from Empty Easel. Google is the destination of 37% leaving the site.

[Update: Boundless Gallery notified member artists by post in February of its intention to close in March 2010]

Discovered Artists



The traffic profile looks good - but look at the numbers.

22% arrive from Facebook and only 5% come from Google - suggesting that the marketing of this site directly or indirectly has not optimised for Google. Compete indicates that it doesn't even rank in Google. 38% leave for Google and 10% go back to Facebook.

EBSQ



Traffic has reduced by a third in the last 12 months.

46%comes from Google and over 12% from other websites suggesting that this website is recognised by the main seach engines in the main browser queries for sites like this.

22% leave to go to Googlewhile 11 next visit blogs.

Etsy



Note that the scale is in MILLIONS of visitors. Note the steady and significant rise in the number of visitors. At a time when eBay traffic has remained static, Etsy has increased from 3.8 million to 5.5 million - and these are ALL people who are interested in arts and crafts.

Interestingly 22% of visitors come from Facebook, 11% from Google and 5% from Blogs. So if you've got an Etsy Store, have got a blog but don't yet have a presence on Facebook you might want to rethink this!

3% of visitors leave to go to paypal (sale!) 23% go back to Facebook and 12% go to Google.

Yessy



Traffic is more or less static and while bigger than some it's not significant overall. 16% arrive from Google and 12% from Facebook. Similar figures return to the same destinations.

Conclusion

Two sites get most of the traffic - eBay and etsy. It would be very interesting to know how much of the eBay traffic is actually art oriented.

When the numbers visiting the art category on eBay are extracted, it's very clear that ETSY is in reality the premier site for having an art store. The numbers are way, way beyond those of any other gallery website selling art online - including eBay.com! It's also the only website where paypal featured as one of the top five destinations of people leaving the site!

I'd hazard a guess that most artists might hope to achieve better traffic via their own blog or a Facebook fan page when you take a look at the site traffic for ALL the artists on a gallery website.

More information

If you want more information about any of these websites please consult my resource sites

• Online Art Galleries and Stores - Resources for Artists which has similar charts which update automatically. If you bookmark this site on your blog or website then you can check up on how the different online galleries are doing with one click.
• Selling Art Online - A Compendium - this provides a home for links to all my 'resources for artists' websites which relate to selling art online
  

Other useful posts on this blog include:

• What's the MAIN way you sell your art? - The Results
• Selling art - online art websites, tracking marketing data and a new survey for artists!
• Selling art online - 10 benefits of a recession

CPSA 16th Annual International Exhibition 2008 - Award winners

The Colored Pencil Society of America announced the award winners for the 16th Annual International Exhibition in Seattle at the Awards banquet on 1st August.

Empty Nest by Jeff George, winner of The CIPPY Best of Show and the Staedtler Award-$3,000
22" x 14", coloured pencil
copyright and courtesy of Jeff George
(do not use without written permission)

The top prizes were awarded as follows:

• The CIPPY Best of Show and the Staedtler Award ($3,000) - Empty Nest by Jeff George, CPSA
  
• The CPSA Award for Exceptional Achievement ($2,000) - Globophobic Porcupine by Paul Van Heest (you can see more of his work in this gallery - his images are always thoughtful and thought-provoking)
  
• The Canson Fine Art Paper Award for Exceptional Merit ($1,000) - A Desert Power by Tonya Holland
  
• The Prismacolor Award for Exceptional Merit ($1,000) - Transient Light by Constance Speth, CPSA
• The Metro Washington DC District Chapter 109 MONA Award for Exceptional Merit ($1,000) - Charley, (The Creative Spirit) by John Smolko, CPSA

You can see a gallery of ALL the winning images on the CPSA website. I'm featuring three of the top prizewinners below.

The juror for the awards was Jeffrey Moose (Artist, Curator and Owner of the Jeffrey Moose Gallery, Seattle). The exhibition of work by selected artists continues at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center until 29th September (details at end).

Jeff George CPSA

This is my first time winning the Cippy Award, and I still haven't come back down to Earth!
Jeff George CPSA

I always knew that Jeff George would win the top award at the CIPFA exhibition one day - it was just a question of when! Jeff is a signature member of CPSA and has been consistently getting into CPSA exhibitions and then winning prizes with his entries for some time. In reviewing the galleries from previous exhibitions I counted an Airfloat Strongbox Award for outstanding recognition, a Prismacolor Award for Exceptional Merit, a Lyra Award for Excellence and three CPSA branch awards for excellence in addition to this year's prize. In recent years he's only missed being among the prizewinners in one year. I guess this makes him one of the top prize winners in CPSA's history.

Jeff seems to have a fascination with elements in the environment and texture and excels at rendering it in all its different guises - whether it's peeling paint on the woodwork as seen in his winning entry Empty Nest this year, or the sand and surf of 'Perpetual', the matchbox and contents in 'Death Row', the bleached car and contents in 'Baggage', the very curious surfaces of 'Butterfly', the contrast between the hard metal and vaporous atmosphere in 'Western Sky', or the skin and flesh of the figure seen through the glass bricks in 'Reticence'. All these works have won prizes in CPSA exhibitions.

When the works accepted for entry this year were announced I commented to Jeff that the subject matter and very restrained colour scheme of 'Empty Nest' very much reminded me of Andrew Wyeth's work. Jeff told me that he very much admires Wyeth and his work and that a couple commented in much the same way to him at the exhibition. He regards this as as the singlest greatest compliment he's ever received. Maybe Jeff can use his technical excellence in rendering in coloured pencil to find and capture in California some of the stillness and undercurrents of emotional content that characterise Wyeth's paintings of Pennsylvania and Maine?

Constance Speth CPSA

I first saw Constance Speth's work at the Annual Exhibition in Albuquerque in 2006 - and simply could not understand why her work had not won a prize as I thought it was outstanding. She excels at abstracting the ordinary and appears to be fascinated by how light transforms interiors. She's also a scribbler - a form of mark making which I love.

I found out from Jeff George that he is also a fan of her work

I too really enjoy the work of Constance Speth. She is one of my favorite colored pencil artists......Up close, her work has a delicate gauze-like feel.
Jeff George

What I can tell you, without even seeing it up close, is that Transient Light will have many layers of mark-making and transparent glazing executed with acute observation for form, colour and tone.

Constance Speth dissolves her subject in light or merges it with shadows to emphasize unity of foreground and background. She employs layers of colored pencil applied in a unique scribbled line of many hues. The network of lines forms transparent clouds and dense mats of rich and glowing color.
CPSA District Chapter 207 - members' gallery - Constance Speth

I searched on the Internet for images of Constance's work - but failed to find very much. I gather she's not a fan! However I did learn that Constance is a Professor Emeritus of the Art Department at Central Washington University, Ellensburg, WA from which she retired in 1995. One of her drawings is included in “The Best of Colored Pencil”, vol. II by Rockport Press.

John Smolko CPSA

The Metro Washington DC District Chapter 109 MONA Award for Exceptional Merit
Charley, (The Creative Spirit) by John Smolko, CPSA
40" x 30", coloured pencil
copyright and courtesy of John Smolko
(do not copy without written permission)

John Smolko is also a scribbler and it'll therefore come as no surprise that I'm a huge fan of John Smolko's work!

People like John Smolko (who recently won Grand Prize Winner of the American Artist 70th Competition) really stand out for me because of the way he has generated a new way of working with coloured pencil. I was very pleased to tell him so when I met him at the 2006 CPSA Exhibition in Albuquerque. I find his work inspirational.
Making A Mark - CPSA and UKCPS: originality in concept, design and execution

This year John has retired from teaching art in high school to become a full time professional artist and workshop instructor. He taught his very first workshop for a CPSA Convention this year and I gather the participants created beautiful scribble drawings!

Winning this award in this years CPSA exhibition was a real rush for me and I feel very fortunate to be associated with all the fine people in our organization. Again, what a wonderful way to start my new career as a full-time artist. I am living a dream.
John Smolko

I'm very fortunate in that John has kindly agreed to do an an interview with me for this blog in the near future.

CPSA District Chapter 207 - Seattle

CPSA 207, the branch which hosted this year's CPSA convention and exhibition, is based in Seattle and covers members of CPSA in Washington State and Oregon. You can can see a gallery of branch members work here. When you look down the list of members' names you'll realise that Washington and Oregon is an absolute 'hot bed' of well known coloured pencil artists and authors! It includes people like:

• Gary Greene, CPSA (author of various coloured pencil instruction books including No Experience Required - Colored & Watercolor Pencil),
• Barbara Benedetti Newton CPSA (author of Colored Pencil Solution Book),
• Ann Kullberg (author of Colored Pencil Portraits and Capturing Soft Realism in Colored Pencil)
  
• Kristy Kutch CPSA (author of Drawing and Painting with Colored Pencil),
• Anne deMille Flood (author ofRealistic Pet Portraits in Colored Pencil) and
  
• Sueellen Ross (author ofPaint Radiant Realism in Watercolor, Ink & Colored Pencil)

DC 207 has also produced a book (Why am I not surprised?! ;) ) explaining the finer points of working with coloured pencils. Northwest Colored Pencil Pointers is now available from DC207 and it contains the artwork and tips, techniques and processes of 47 coloured pencil artists working in the northwest.

CPSA News

The 17th Annual Exhibition will be held in Atlanta, GA in 2009 and the Host will be DC107 - Atlanta.

Those interested in coloured pencil art may want to take a look at the new page on the CPSA website for members' websites.

Links:

• Colored Pencil Society of America
• CPSA 16th Annual International Exhibition, Seattle, WA 2008 - Award Winners
• CPSA 16th Annual International Exhibition, Seattle, WA 2008 -Selected Artists
  
• The exhibition continues until 29th September 2008 at the 2nd Level Atrium, Washington State Convention and Trade Center, 800 Convention Place, Seattle, WA 98101
  Gallery Hours: 7 days a week, 7 am - 10 pm All welcome; no entrance fee (Parking does have costs)
• CPSA DC 207
• Jeff George
• Paul Van Heest
• John Smolko
  

Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers

I went to the Bankside Gallery yesterday to see the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers. The exhibition has a diverse collection of different types of print-making - all of which have excellent explanations about the processes involved in the exhibition catalogue.

Supermarket Man
(Hector Purchase Prize and UWE Prize)
Gerry Baptist
70 x 70cm
hexachrome digital print
with screen print varnish

In particular, it was very interesting to see that the Society welcomes innovative techniques as well as traditional practices.

Gerry Baptist's Supermarket Man, a satirical comment on our civilization's wastefulness, is a many-layered computer-generated image. A complex collage, its background is a scanned in abstract painting by the artist; the target-like motifs are created with illustrator software; the advertising slogans are snipped from a book dating from the 1930s; the gestural sweeps of pink and orange were first dripped in black on the paper and subsequently transformed digitally into colour, the bin bag was photographed; and the drawing of the figures and the shopping trolley were made with the aid of a graphic pad. Finally a hand-prepared silkscreen deposited a varnish on the line-drawing and the bin bag.
Catalogue

Gerry Baptist's website provides further explanations about his artwork and processes. He was elected an associate member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in 2008.

I gather the only form of print-making which the Society frowns upon and which is not eligible for show is the reproduction (ie a giclee digital print created of an original work of art.)

Overall, the work represented is of excellent quality and you have until 1st June to visit to see for yourself. During exhibitions, the Bankside Gallery is open daily from 11am until 6pm.


Featured Artist - David Gluck RWS RE (1939-2007)

The featured artist is David Gluck RWS RE who sadly died just over a year ago died shortly after winning the 2006 Singer Friedlander/Sunday Times watercolour competition (see today's other post RWS/Sunday Times Watercolour Competition - call for entries for details of this year's competition).

His large etchings and aquatints of evening scenes in Venice are absolutely superb. There are three on show with unframed prices between £350 and £550.

Late Evening Gondolas, Venice
David Gluck RE, RWS
etching and aquatint

A Yorkshire man, he studied at Wakefield College of Art and Leeds College of Art before taking a postgraduate diploma in printmaking in 1962 at the Royal College of Art. In 1974, he was appointed Head of Printmaking at Central St Martin's College of Art and Design - becoming Director of Studies of the Fine Arts Course. For eight years, from 1985 to 1993, he was also a member of the Printmaking Panel of the British School of Rome. He was also a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, the London Group, the New English Art Club, and the Society of Landscape Painters. (For further information see links at the end of this post)

Over many years I have found that etching, monoprint and watercolour give me the necessary flexibility and stimulation I require to resolve images that evolve through the open-ended use of the process .
David Gluck - London Group

Prizewinners

I'm going to include the prizewinners - but it'll take a me a little time to track down websites - so that will be an update to this post. [Update - now completed - Links are to websites or galleries which reference the artist. Note the very distinct gender difference in who has their own website!]

The prizewinner whose work absolutely stood out for me was Harry Brockway's The Pearl Necklace which won the Wood Engraver's Prize and the Aberstywyth University School of Art Collection Purchase Prize. This is simply stunning to look - the wood carving technique is exquisite!

The Pearl Necklace
Harry Brockway ARE
wood engraving

Harry Brockway is one of a growing number of younger artists making wood engravings. Originally trained as a sculptor, he was taught wood engraving at the Royal Academy Schools by Sarah van Niekerk. He is also a stonemason and now lives in Glastonbury.
The Gregynog Press

The prizewinners are listed below.

• Aberystwyth University School of Art Collection Purchase Prize
• Roy Willingham ARE Post Print 1 and Post Print 3
• Karen Keogh ARE Cinnamon Island
• Harry Brockway ARE The Pearl Necklace
• Angie Lewin ARE Alliums and Fennel
• Print Quarterly Prize
• Sally McLaren RE Ocean Series - Untitled
• Ashmolean Museum, Oxford - Vivien leigh Purchase prize
• Siabhra O'Brien ARE
• Society of Wood Engraver's Prize
• Harry Brockway ARE The Pearl Necklace
• Ian Stephens ARE Boundary Lane
• The Hector Purchase Prize
• Gerry Baptist ARE Supermarket Man
  
• Paintings in Hospitals Purchase Prize
• Julia Manning ARE Prunella's Party
• Gail Brodholt ARE Nightowls on the Northern Line and Westbound on the Piccadilly Line
• Centre for Fine Art Print Research, UEW Prize
• Gerry Baptist ARE
• Curwen Studio Prize
• Kate Dicker ARE
  

Events

The RE have a number of events running during the course of the exhibition. The remaining ones are:

• Linocut by Angie Lewin ARE and Gail Brodholt ARE, Saturday 24th May 2008 - 1pm - 4pm
• Woodcut print demo by Nana Shiomi RE, Sunday 1st June 2008 - 1pm - 4pm. Nan Shimoi produces contemporary Japanese woodcut prints and talks on her website about and after ukiyo-e.
  

I use both very traditional Japanese methods of printing, similar to those used by ukiyo-e printers, and also very modern techniques, materials and tools.
Nana Shiomi - talking about technique

As always Frank Kiely RE (see Frank Kiely - an Irish artist in London), who works part-time at the Gallery was extremely helpful and informative about the various painter-printmakers and I enjoyed seeing his new works - one of which includes a view of The Globe Theatre (click for a larger image)

The Globe - crop
Frank Kiely
screenprint

Purchases

It is now possible to buy original prints by Members of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers online. Click here to view prints available for sale. Unfortunately, this commerce facility doesn't include David Gluck's etchings of Venice which are stunning. For those you need to go to the Bankside Gallery and view and buy!

Links:

• Obituaries of David Gluck in the Guardian, Independent and the Times
• Bankside Gallery - home of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers

Kew Gardens - two women and two galleries for botanical art

The construction of the new Shirley Sherwood Galley of Botanical Art next to the North Gallery (October 2007)

This year there will be two galleries for botanical art in Kew Gardens. The North Gallery, which houses the work of Marianne North, will be joined by a brand new gallery exhibiting the Shirley Sherwood Collection. This new gallery will be the first in the world to be wholly devoted to exhibitions of botanical art and is due to open this Spring and will have two major exhibitions in the Spring and Autumn - read on for more details.

I took the above photograph last October when the gallery was 'out of the ground'.

You can read more about:

• Marianne North and the North Gallery (pdf file) and
• the Shirley Sherwood Collection Gallery of Botanical Art (Kew Gardens press release)

Dr Sherwood travels extensively and has been collecting contemporary botanical art since 1990. Her comprehensive collection includes work by artists living in thirty different countries and documents the emergence of a new wave of botanical painters and the renaissance of their art form. Arguably the most important private collection of twentieth century botanical art in the world, these art works complement Kew's own collection which has a rich heritage of eighteenth and nineteenth century illustrations as well as more recent acquisitions.
Kew Gardens

The botanical art of Marianne North and the North Gallery

Marianne North (1830-1890) displayed a talent for drawing and developed an interest in travelling from an early age.

She travelled widely in her lifetime and painted quickly and amassed an amazing collection of paintings of flowers, fruits and vegetables in their natural habitat. Her travels started in the USA, from where she went to Canada, the Caribbean, Brazil, Japan, Sarawak, Java, Sri Lanka, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Seychelles and Chile. - all in Victororian dress(!) - with brief returns to the UK in between her various journies.

Today the Gallery houses 832 of her paintings which depict over 900 species of plants.

The Gallery was her idea and she provided support to enable it to be built to house her collection of paintings. Sadly the gallery has deteriorated in recent years and now needs a major refurbishment - due to start when the new Gallery right next door has opened.

Kew Gardens - The Botanical Art Collection

Kew's collection of botanical art forms part of the National Reference Collection and plays a key role in plant science research, particularly for the identification of plants. It's arranged systematically by plant families.

The collection has been assembled over the last 200 years and includes holds works by the great masters of the eighteenth century, such as G. D. Ehret, the Bauer brothers and Redouté, nineteenth century artists including Walter Hood Fitch and Marianne North and by twentieth century and contemporary botanical artists such as Margaret Mee, Stella Ross-Craig and Christabel King. It also includes many of the original botanically precise watercolours from Curtis's Botanical Magazine dating back to 1789.

The botanical art collection of Dr Shirley Sherwood

Dr Shirley Sherwood is one of the leading collectors of botanical art, studied botany at Oxford and once thought about becoming a botanical illustrator but went off to become a scientist involved in the team which developed Tagamet instead.

Having renewed her interest in botanical art in the 1991, she now owns over 500 contemporary botanical paintings and drawings, collected from nearly 200 artists, from 30 different countries, and has written several books including Contemporary Botanical Artists: The Shirley Sherwood Collection and A Passion for Plants: Contemporary Botanical Masterworks.

Parts of her collection have toured the United States including the Hunt Institute, Pittsburgh and Denver Art Museum. In 2003 she showed a hundred works at the Smithsonian in Washington which were visited by over half a million people.

Today she is also Editor-in-Chief of the Orient-Express Magazine (her husband owns Sea Containers and the Orient Express). She is also a Vice Chairman and a judge on the Picture Committee of the Royal Horticultural Society, London; a former trustee on the Advisory Board of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew ; an honorary trustee of the American Society for Botanical Artists; a Fellow of the Linnean Society and on the Board of the Smithsonian Institution.

The New Gallery

An extract from the sign about the new gallery
showing three views of the new gallery
and its relationship with the North gallery

The idea behind the design of The Shirley Sherwood Gallery is that it should make viewing of botanical art by Kew's visitors much easier while at the same time providing a protective environment for the artwork. The main gallery space is a ‘box within a box' where the environment, - both climate and light - can be controlled. The exhibition spaces, totalling 300 square metres, have also been designed to be as flexible as possible, by using versatile display and lighting systems. Prints, an 'art on demand' service and publications will be available for sale.

In April 2008, the inaugural exhibition aims to take highlights from both the Kew Gardens and the Sherwood Collections to demonstrate the scope of the two collections and the richness of botanical art as a whole. It will also provide an overview of the most significant artists from c1700 through to contemporary artists. It sounds to me like this is an exhibition which should not be missed by those who are enthusiastic about botanical art. I'll be an early visitor when it opens!

As one might expect a book to accompany the exhibition has been written and will provide a richly illustrated introduction to the two collections.

The autumn of 2008 will have the second exhibition of the new galery. This will focus on Trees and look at how trees have been illustrated. It's intended that future exhibitions will celebrate a range of artists and their subjects throughout the history of botanical illustration.

So - all in all there's a big treat ahead for botanical art fans in 2008!

If you want to take a look at what Kew looks like in February take a look at the set of flickr photos in the links below.

[Note: Today's post on Travels with a sketchbook in...... is about Henry Moore in Kew Gardens ]

Links:

• Kew Gardens
• Marianne North and the North Gallery
  
• Portraying plants: illustrations collections at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (pdf)
• Vanessa's Interview - Shirley Sherwood
  
• Flickr - Mex Beady Eyes - Kew in February 2008 including the Shirley Sherwood Gallery
• Making A Mark - botanical art
• Botanical Art - Resources for Artists