If there's one thing I have learned as a result of owning and running two art galleries — along with being an artist, myself — it is that art is always a great challenge to sell.
We can make all sorts of high level excuses that "art is a luxury item" rather than a necessity, and that it's difficult to match up people with the style of art they enjoy, but there's really more to it than that.
What we learned from keeping galleries is that the vast majority of art goes out the door as an impulse buy. Very rarely did we get anybody in the front door who would look around the gallery and confess that they were there because they needed a piece of art for some piece of their house.
Most often, our buyers were not even local. They were visitors who were out enjoying wandering around in an unfamiliar town, and being in a good mood because they were likely on holiday, they would spot a gallery and walk in just on a lark… and maybe, just maybe, there would be something in the gallery that they developed "instant rapport" with and had to take home.
Perhaps the single most useful sales tool we had in the gallery were a number of small signs mixed in with the art that declared "we ship art worldwide!" It solved the uncertainty anyone might feel as to how they were going to get something home.
Whereas there are lots and lots of artists in the world who have an abundance of talent, it is actually only a tiny minority who have a combination of talent as well as the "it factor" where that sense of instant rapport between viewer and art becomes more frequent then average.
In both our galleries, it held true that approximately 60-70% of our sales dollars came from the five most popular artists we represented, with each gallery representing between 80 and 100 active artists, in total.
And believe me, our selection was well curated and everybody in the gallery created work that exhibited both talent and skill. But most of them just didn't have that "it factor" that grabbed and communicated with potential buyers.
Of course this leaves us with the question of to what extent commercial viability is important when you're an artist. Is your objective merely to create art that fully expresses what you want to express, or do you want to create art and also sell it?
In many artistic circles it's considered a considerable faux-pas to actually admit that you care about selling your work, and most artists feel almost embarrassed when they have to set prices on their work.
But everybody has to eat!
I have definitely been among those who feel hesitant to talk about selling their work, and the business side of art... and that has also been part of what makes art a "difficult sell."
Thanks for visiting, and feel free to leave a comment — engagement is always welcome!
20241005
H0092/0329
All images are our own, unless otherwise attributed.
This is an AI-free post!