Blogs giving painters a new way to sell art
Online presence helps clients know the work
By Daniel Grant, Globe Correspondent | July 2, 2007
Admirers often told Elizabeth Torak that they wished they could watch her working the brush as she developed one of her paintings.
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Her studio in Pawlet, Vt., was too small to invite them all in, but she has managed to accommodate them through her blog -- and bolster her sales at the same time. One couple directed to her blog by a gallery owner watched her work on a still life titled "Fruits and Flowers" for six weeks and purchased it when it was complete.
"They told me how much fun they had had following the progress of the painting on the blog," she said. "I had been completely unaware that they were doing this and was surprised and pleased, and also relieved that I had kept my language on the blog upbeat and temperate."
For many artists, a blog has become a primary marketing tool in a business that tends to depend on relationships. Collectors have typically bought through dealers they've come to trust and from artists they meet at art fairs, open-studio events, and gallery openings.
"I encourage all the artists I represent to start a blog," said New York City art gallery owner Edward Winkleman. "It gives you an immediate presence in the art world."
San Francisco artist Anna L. Conti, who is represented by Winkleman, said the Internet has fundamentally changed the way she sells her work.
"I used to hold open studios and do art fairs, where I would always talk to collectors," Conti said, "but now I leave paintings with my gallery, and the people who buy my work never meet me anymore."
Conti's blog is focused on the day-to-day life of herself as artist, offering one day a detail of a painting that will be on display at an upcoming gallery exhibit, another day the type of framing she used for one work.
"I mounted the paintings inside a flat wooden case which I picked up one day when I was walking past one of those urban nomads who was cleaning out his van," she wrote in one posting. "After a bit of cleaning, some paint, and some new hardware, it was just what I wanted.
Winkleman said he didn't have any hard numbers to show that blogs boosted his artists' sales, but he was convinced that the blogs helped.
"It's my job to bring in collectors, and I appreciate anything artists may do -- including attracting more attention through blogs -- to help me," he said.
Torak still sells most of her work through the Tilting at Windmills gallery in Manchester, Vt., but she said her blog "certainly helps supplement sales" by raising the interest level of prospective buyers.
Writing for the blog, she said, requires her to clarify her ideas, which makes it easier to know what to say to collectors when she meets them. "The more confident I am with words, the better impression I make," she said, "and that certainly helps sales."
Torak's blog is aimed at collectors "who are already familiar with my work and want to find out more about me." She posts images, from preliminary drawings to finished oils, and offers information about herself, sources of inspiration for her work, and techniques.
"I spent my first hour of work today putting in the arm of the woman tasting the soup -- not the one you can see but the one hidden in the shadows," she wrote about one work in progress. "Even though you hardly see that arm, I think it is very important to the painting. For one thing it expresses the unconscious mind of the woman tasting the soup."
Unlike those of some other bloggers, Torak's postings are sporadic, sometimes months apart. While she said that she's "amazed how thoughts come together" when she's writing about her work, she can't continually post messages if she's going to get any painting done.
"I mean, there are only so many hours a day I can sit in front of a computer," she said.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
