Why Buy My Artwork?

If you read my last (and first) blog before this one, probably the first thing you noticed was the date.  It has been many many days since that last post.  The subject of that first blog was the "fun and frustration" of starting an on-line business to sell my artwork.  That business is cinquistudio.com, by the way.  I was ranting about how much I didn't understand social networking sites as a component of a marketing plan, and fully intended to expand on that rant by complaining about how much time those things consume.  Well blogging takes a whole bunch of time too, which is why I haven't been back here for the last month or so.

The whole create and sell artwork thing is actually a supplemental gig.  At this time, at least. I really hope to make it a more permanent thing, though.  My primary occupation is architecture.  I am a practicing architect in upstate New York, USA and that has been my chief source of income for the last forty years or so.  I love my work, but after 40 years I am looking to move on to something more expansive.  Architects and architecture as a profession are often romanticized on TV or in the movies.  In reality, it is nothing like what you see.  Oh ya there are the "rock stars" of architecture such as Frank Gehry designing uber sculptural, stainless steel clad museums and theaters around world.  But for every rock star there are probably a couple of thousand studio musicians plugging away at the background sounds of everyday living such as offices, homes, restaurants, shopping centers, etc.  A plugging away that has become less rewarding in direct proportion to increasing regulatory control, growing technological demands, tighter budgets imposed by a "throw-a-way" building philosophy and maximized developer profits.  Slopping copious amounts of richly colored paint on a canvas is much more fun and truly liberating until the monthly mortgage statement comes in the mail.  Then, I am rudely awakened to the fact that I am short on billable hours for the month.

So I have had to prioritize where to place my efforts in this artwork thing.  All of the stories you hear about the phenomenal success that will come your way by just putting together a website and uploading it for the world to click on, are no less romantic than those TV architects.  That is not to say that one shouldn't try to become the next on-line phenom.  But it does take more effort than one might think. I decided to put together a Google Adwords package as my first priority before devoting any more time to Facebook and blogging.  One of the image adds is shown here.

It has been a challenge putting a campaign together.  The folks a Google give you a lot to learn and digest in the process, including thinking of all of the different words or phrases one might type into a search engine that will trigger your ad to be shown on the screen.  Once you have done that, you have to actually design an ad that will reflect those words in a way that will place your ad in a prominent position relative to all of the other ads vying for screen space on a search results page.  You get a whole new sense of the world wide web.

I won't go into the subtleties of an Adwords campaign here, but all of this effort triggered a wrenching sense of doubt and the frightening question..."why would somebody give up their hard earned money to buy one of my paintings?"  Now, it's not like I didn't think of this before I jumped into this thing, but I guess I pushed the issue to my sub-conscious while I was having all that fun slopping paint and designing a website and stuff like that.  But once I had all the stuff like that, I needed to think about the question.

As I said I did think about the what, why and how of producing and selling artwork.  In fact, I spent a lot of time on the "net" doing research about art, about selling art, about website design for selling art, about marketing techniques used in selling art, about having patience in selling art, about overcoming rejection in the process of selling art, about....well you get it. 

There seems to be a number of  compelling reasons to buy art.  A lot of them have to do with "investment" and "collecting."  There are regular news reports about the sale of some masterpiece by Christies or Sothebys bringing a record sum of money to some mysterious seller by some mysterious buyer.   Many sources are devoted to the how's and whys of building a collection and the how's and whys of getting the attention of collectors.  And Lord knows there are countless art dealers and consultants who have the inside track on up and coming artists and are able to advise collectors on how to get in on the ground floor, so to speak, with these soon to be rock stars of the art world.  It follows logically then, that there are countless sources consumed with how a soon to be rock star artist can get to be represented by the countless art dealers or consultants who have the inside track with those collectors who want to own work done by said soon to be rock stars, etc.


In all of my research however, I noticed that every time I found of piece of work on some body's website that I thought was really beautiful there was an emotional response.  You know, that tingling sensation or heart palpitation thing.  I didn't know whether the artist was famous or about to be famous, or was considered "good" by any of the experts or whether the asking price for the piece represented a good value.  All I knew was that my heart was pounding and I wanted that piece to hang on a wall where I could see it everyday.  I found myself fantasizing about winning some mega lottery and buying an old airplane hanger where I could put up a million square feet of wall surface and surround myself with all of this beautiful artwork that I found.

In the end, it was those heart palpitations that got me into this thing.  I reasoned that there had to be a whole bunch of people like me out there that would want a piece of art simply because they liked it.  So, why buy my artwork?  BECAUSE YOU LIKE IT!