My wife Sherry, is a painter. She does original studio and plein air works. This is a description of her work we wrote for a recent show application;
"Original studio and plein air works capturing the splendor and harmony of our natural world. My main source of inspiration comes from seeing God’s incredible handiwork in the mountain vistas and captivating countryside of East Tennessee. I also draw upon places visited in our frequent travels, Some of my work aspires to preserve our heritage with scenes of old home places and other structures in their natural settings, All paintings are created with acrylics on canvas using a limited palette."
Sherry does not want to do prints(and I agree). However, my observations from our first two festivals is that the prints are practically the only sales any of the painters are making. We do not expect to make a lot of money on the shows, but we would like to cover time and expenses with enough left over to buy some art, but we have not even come close to breaking even. In two shows, we have sold one $50 miniature. We have received lots of traffic in our booth, lots of oohs and aahhs, lots of compliments from patrons and artists about the work and our display, lots of question and answer sessions regarding specific works, but only one small sale. We love to travel and see new places, we enjoy the atmosphere of the festivals, and we have met quite a few friendly and interesting people, especially the other artists. My concern is that the festivals are not the venue for Sherry's work. I watch the crowd parading by and I see almost no one carrying paintings. Ceramics, jewelry, prints, seem to sell. Our price range is $50 for a 5" by 5" gallery wrapped miniature to $850 for a custom framed 28" by 22" or 22" by 28" depending on orientation studio work. Sherry's plein air works are usually custom framed 11" x 14" or 14" by 11" and our priced at $225. The most common size for her studio work is custom framed 16" x 20" or 20" x 16" priced at $500.
Conversely, in the one juried exhibition at the Knoxville Museum of Art in which Sherry participated, she submitted three plein air works completed that week and one studio piece. Two of the plein air pieces sold within an hour of the exhibition opening.
If the exposure Sherry's work gets at the shows leads to later sales, the expense would be justified, but it is too soon to tell. The chance of winning an award for later marketing purposes and prize money to defer expenses would be another potential justification. If we did make a profit at a festival that money would most likely be used to buy some of the beautiful stuff we have seen from the other artists. We never could remember where the booth with the awesome hummingbird feeders were at our first show. Yes, I am an avid birder.
Even though both of our first two-day shows were plagued by one day of bad weather. Our experience combined with the experiences of other painters on this site, have lead me to question our marketing strategy. In addition all the administrative and marketing stuff has taken away from the time Sherry has to do what she loves, which is either get out in the field and paint or paint in her studio. She loves attending workshops and participating in plein air events which are also on weekends. Although she loves meeting and talking to people, she has little patience for the administrative or marketing stuff, she loves to create. I am trying to fill the administrative, marketing technical, and road crew roles.
I realize our first year or two we must bite the bullet and take all the festivals we can get to build up a resume. This weekend we are doing a small local indoor juried art and craft fair 10 minutes from home at the Tennessee Creates Arts and Craft Fair held as part of the Secret City Festival in Oak Ridge Tennessee. The show is relatively new and mostly craft but would like to attract more fine artists. The Oak Ridge Art Association(we are members) was gracious enough to find space for us after we were rejected by the Whalehead Club, Under the Oaks festival in Corolla, North Carolina and thus missed their application deadline. Fortunately, they had a cancellation and were able to get us in. We do not have to worry about rain and we get to sleep in our own bed. The $125 booth fee is also reasonable.
So my questions for the painter. What marketing strategies should we look to to help pay for our addiction. Are art fairs and festivals the appropriate venue? Which shows are the best for Sherry's style of original paintings? We do not want to stop doing the festivals, we have enjoyed participating. However, do we go in with the idea that we will sell little to nothing at the festivals and find other more effective ways to sell her work.
So if you have a few minutes, I would love to hear suggestions from some of the other painters about what works.
As always, thanks for your feedback and support.
Comments
Hi John and Sherry, I too am a 2-d artist primarily sell pastel landscapes. I does take the right venue and demographics to sell wall art in these times. Sherry your art appears very more then fairly priced.
Wall art is just tough to move right now. People will buy paintings at Plein Air events as myself and two of my artist friends all purchased paintings from Joshua Bean at the Sedona Plein Air Event 2 years ago. I hate to say it but Galleries have been sluggish for me as well. My suggestions. Go for the best shows and if you get in great and if not that's ok too. But remember no show can guarantee sales for you. One year my be great and the next a dud, I have had my fair share of them. Don't always believe what is in print by the promoters, the best way is to talk or call other artists you trust who have done that show the year prior and see if they will share some info with you. I always go and look at the previous years artist list and see who I know who has participated this gives me a sense of the quality of the show.
Lastly, I should be in Blue Ridge also for the event, Stay in touch and we catch up with one another. My e-mail is : virginiadauth@att.net, Best of Luck to you at the shows!!
Great advice Lon and greatly appreciated. I enjoyed your website. I will be reworking ours in hope to improve the consistency of the works offered for sale. Sherry is focusing on painting. She has her easel set up by the creek running through our property as we speak. Your advice is very much in line with what we are hearing from many of the veterans painters.
Thanks again
Hi John, A good initial question that has come up for us, too. A few thoughts...and take this with a grain of salt. I am in my third year of shows. Showing paintings, mostly figure with a few landscapes. The first year my wife and I got into any show that would take us and found that sales were sometimes good, sometimes not...generally breaking even. We then came to realize that selling paintings is about being in the right place at the right time and in the right show. The stronger the work became and the higher the prices went the smaller our audience, and more selective. Patience and perserverence seems to be the course. Consistency of work and presentation is a must but with that comes a smaller audience set. After banging our heads for a spell we finally realized that not all fair goers will respond to our work. And of the ones who do only a small percentage will consider buying...and of those few, fewer will actually pull the trigger. Our approach is to get to where the collectors - not buyers - are. Collectors are buyers but buyers are not necessarily collectors. Collectors also seem to know what they are looking at and have an intelligent response to the work. So, bottom line is to work on getting a strong package together -work, branding, website, etc. and to strive for the bigger shows. We follow other artists that have consistently strong work and work that is similar to mine. If they are in a show then we go for that one. Veterans know stuff and usually don't waste time on lesser opportunities. It's tough being a painter, particularly when you have ceramics on one side and art on a stick on the other...both selling like crazy. Ignore the crickets chirping in your booth and keep making good paintings.
Thanks Alison. We were afraid Blowing Rock was more of a craft show so we did not apply. In addition, that show will not work for us this year because it is too close to our Ireland trip. We will be looking forward to your review. I hope we are wrong about Blowing Rock because that is a very easy trip through one of our favorite places, the Great Smoky Mountains. I will check out the other shows you mentioned. Good Luck this summer, Sherry and I look forward to meeting you next time we are at the same show.
Thanks Pam, we appreciate you taking time to look at the website. There is still quite a bit of work to be done there. Sherry has finished quite a few pieces since we put the website up. We do intend rearrange and update the website with a more focused presentation of the works offered for sale, and move the stuff that is not for sale to a different section for people that know Sherry and/or just want to look. I believe the works offered for sale are more consistent with the theme of her work. In addition we intend to streamline the process for people to buy paintings online. The difficulty there is the digital images are still not the same as actually being able to see the painting itself.
We are sticking with not printing. Sherry feels like she owes it to the buyer of one of her original pieces that they own something unique, and I respect that. So we will adjust our marketing accordingly. This appears to mean a more traditional original fine art focus to the shows to which we apply, which will be accompanied by more rejections. We understand this means continued improvement is required to our jury presentations and much more research in finding shows. This will probably mean longer trips, and a fewer shows. In addition we will try to see her artwork is presented in a few local galleries. At the workshop this weekend she was asked to submit something for a gallery show in Nashville. Maybe that is a start. We have already applied to 10 or 11 shows this fall. Nearly half of these are in East or Central Tennessee, with three in a very affluent county near Nashville where our children and grandchildren live.
The $50 original miniatures was Sherry's idea for offering something more affordable. Indeed, our one sale was one of the miniatures. Her plein air works are smaller custom framed 11 x 14 and are priced at $225, although still not in the craft fair price range offer a less expensive way to own an original work.
Since we started this all the additional time in preparing to go on the road and bumbling through the first two shows has taken Sherry away from the easel. She really enjoyed the plein air event in Knoxville last month and attending a plein air workshop in Nashville this past weekend because she was painting. The Ireland trip will provide her nearly three weeks to hone her artistry. I know I cannot wait to see visions of one of our ancestral homes hanging on the wall.
Thanks again for your input. Now I am devoting the day to working on my dissertation, or Sherry will be questioned in my disappearance.
I didn't get to see much of the show but I suspect Roanoke is not your market. A painter down from my location who did lovely work had sold very little by Sunday morning. You might look into some shows in Northern Virginia. Also I hear Blowing Rock is good for expensive work but I am doing it for the first time this July so maybe someone else will chime in. Paragon's Leesburg show and maybe the Charlotte show might be a good fit for you.
john, just took a peek at your web. nicely done. when juring into an original sale only show you will need to focus your wifes work on one theme. do not show the jury the broad spectrum in which your wife paints. that includes the booth shoot.
I can see the discussion has drifted to a print or not print. and that is a choice each artists makes, however when you limit your sales to a particular buyer you need to seek out shows that attract that buyer. If you do arts and crafts shows then you need to re adjust your marketing plan to include lower price range products. just saying.
Karen, I am not saying there is anything wrong with artists who choose to do prints. Indeed as a school teacher and former school teacher we understand the economic realities of not being able to spend $500 on a painting, no matter how bad you want to. Sherry would have had a Jim Gray hanging on our wall a long tome ago if we could even afford the print. It is just something we cannot do at this time. Who knows,. We might change our mind somewhere down the road. So for now if we could occasionally do shows where we did not have to compete with the less expensive prints, we would like to give it a try. As Richard pointed out, some artist's prints are priced higher than Sherry's originals.
I don't understand the issue around prints. What is so wrong with providing a way for people of different income levels who appreciate your art but can't afford an $850 painting a way to have your image on their wall to love and admire? Gratitude people! Art is a want, not a necessity. I feel honored everytime someone pulls out their hard earned cash or credit card to purchase my work, be it a $750 original or a $30 print.
Richard, the trading idea is interesting. Someday we might get into that.
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