The Alternatives, or "less is more"

As my art year draws to a close (being ever the academic I think of 'years' from autumn to summer) with Urban Art coming up soon I wanted to share some of my views on where I've shown and sold work, and what I see happening in my little part of the gallery world.

First I'd like to make very clear that in my heart and head I'm a gallery artist. I love my galleries and do, if I have a choice, show and sell through them. But a trend I've had over the last couple years is that my stables of small local outer-London galleries have been closing down. So I've been having to make the effort to re-explore some alternative ways of showing my work that I left behind a few years ago.

Here's a small handful of what I did try:

Re-joining the Skylark Gallery collective
I got a lot out of Skylark when I was first a member about 4 years ago, but felt I'd moved on. And I had. But things change and I wanted to try again the opportunity to show my work in an environment where I was active in the process. In addition I've been trying some art fairs, just one benefit of an artist-run gallery is that we can take part in gallery-only events. So I've taken the risk and tried out the first ever Northern Art Show, the Chelsea Art Fair, and coming up this autumn the Affordable Art Fair in London. Now I have had work in art fairs before and actually didn't take part in them with Skylark during my first membership because other galleries already took my work to events. But those were galleries that now either don't exist or no longer represent my work. In fact I'd decided I may not in fact want my work at art fairs altogether. But Skylark was a decision to take some new risks (you can only reap what you sow!) and say "why not?"! It's a year of new experiments. I'm very much looking forward to the AAF, and at the Northern Art Show was one of the best sellers with Skylark and also had a new gallery contact me from Yorkshire. (Image: "Early Tide", sold at Northern Art Show)

Open Studios
Last summer, so start of my year, I moved house from Lee Green to Greenwich. This meant getting involved with a new community of artists. As I've posted before I was very entrenched in the large, very active artistic community in Lee Green so moving away from it was quite scary! These past two weekends were my first Greenwich Open Studios. It was very different from Lee Green: entirely fine art, artists more spread out, and quite a few less artists taking part. On the whole, it was a success. Unlike Lee Green I wasn't aiming for bargain hunters and a lot of Christmas shopping visitors (Lee Green OS is in November). All of our visitors - every one of them - was friendly, eager to see original artwork, and genuinely seemed interested in the local artists generally even if our work in particular wasn't their cup of tea. (We did have a planned advantage of two different styles of work on show.) Overall: fewer visitors but quality visitors. I did better here than I have ever done in Lee Green. And that's not just sales (although it was sales too) because I also met new artists and collectors in the area, built my mailing list, and found out about the local feel for art. (image: "Brownsea Island", sold on Sunday 15th June)

Urban Art - artist fairs
I don't do many artist fairs and probably would balk at any other event showing my art out on railings. But I do love Urban Art. An honest review: it's a completely mixed bag with cheap stuff, expensive stuff, new artists, hobbyists, professionals, good art, truly bad art, and some fantastic art. But it's definitely fun, and there's the best Mexican food in Britain by a local chef who sets up a food tent (I hope he's there again this year!). Plus the Lambeth Country Fair is around the corner the same weekend, so you can't really go wrong.

My very best one-day sales ever, for *any* venue, were at Urban Art several years ago in the pouring rain. Visitors actually got under my clear plastic cover to look at the art. Each year buyers from previous years still come and say hello. Last year I showed my Cinemascapes and sold half of them to a lovely couple. (one was a follow up sale later in the year) So who comes to a Brixton street fair and spends a lot of money on original art? Frankly, a lot of people. They come knowing this established event, and knowing there is art there worth seeing. So fence railings aside, quirky events like this can be great for artists and collectors alike. (Image: "A New Hope", sold at Urban Art 2007)

Etsy - and online
I limit my online selling because I firmly believe there are far too many sites out there. Like with my artwork I would rather choose quality than quantity. The majority of my online sales, the vast majority, are to buyers in the USA. For this reason I really love online sales - reaching a whole other market, different advertising and exposure. Even if sales are slow the costs of listing on Etsy are very minimal, both in time and money. You'll hear often on Etsy that it's for cheap crafts. Not so. I ignore people saying that. Is there a lower 'usual' price range? Yes there is, and think much of that comes from it being online (most sellers are less established with their reputations as makers) and the current US economy.

But it doesn't matter what the average is - I'm not aiming at the average, nor is my work in an average price range or style. So I use it as an affordable, different type of venue and try to bring my audience there or find a new one through it. This works for me. In addition to my average sale of a tiny Horizon paintings, which are priced above the Etsy average (according to forum discussions), people buy multiples. And recently I had a lovely New York couple find me through Etsy and they bought one of the last Cinemascape paintings. In the past my large US sales have been to existing customers who knew my work well and commissioned large pieces, so it was slightly nervewracking packing it up for brand new people in NY who I'd never sold to before! But exciting at the same time. I do hope they love it. (Image: "Varykino" sold through Etsy last week)

Galleries
They don't go away. Are they alternative? From my experience with other artists around me they can be. Not all artists choose the gallery route. Not all artists appreciate the benefits a gallery can offer. So this past year has been spent also looking for new galleries to show my work, though I've been approaching that task differently in the past. My approach now is not to email them all, send images, etc, but rather to get my work out more through these alternative opportunities and being active generally so they can find me. I still approach a few the old-fashioned way but to be honest, the new way is working better.

Again the result is fewer, but better quality. Perhaps that's the lesson to be learned with all of this.

I've been making fewer paintings because they take so much longer now, but they're better paintings. I take part in fewer things online, but am more active on the ones that are succesful (and that can just mean networking, advice and sharing ideas). I don't worry about marketing to all buyers, just to the few right buyers. I'd like fewer places to exhibit, but better ones where I have a closer relationship with them.