‘Sinead’ (2018) Acrylic on canvas
Time: 00:17 am
Date: 1.07.18 (at the time of starting to write post)
Mood: Feeling Small..
Listening To: Just the tick of the clock!
Making A Start:
So this is very late (0r early!) post, but as I want to write whilst I have time and keep at this blog – AND whilst things are fresh in my mind..here it is.
So a few days ago I finally made contact with the first artist on my list of people I needed to contact in terms of looking for the next steps with my new artwork. She is a watercolour painter from Wolverhampton who paints animals and is represented by Whitewall Galleries/De Montford Fine Art. It took me a while to compose a message but she got back to me straight away and it turned out she was attending the current arts festival (Junction Festival) we have on in our city this weekend, and said she would be a the local pub with two other artists I know. So I got the chance to talk to her tonight and it was extremely useful but also it was a ‘no nonsense’ chat. I had actually prepared the images of my new work and also had wrote questions in my notebook – most of which she had answered over the conversations without me having to ask. Most of what she said was similar to what my mentor advised really, but with some added points.
She said I could either go the ‘gallery’ route or the ‘publishing’ route; in terms of ‘publishing’ she means like an art publishing company that licences your artwork to certain retailers and where you get a percentage of the sales when particular items sell with your artwork on it. However she did say you have to sell a lot of items for this to work. She has actually gone down the publishing route however the the second route was probably the best to go down and this is galleries.
She has advised me to research galleries and narrow it down to the galleries representing artists and artwork like mine and get in touch with around 20. Next to phone them first, find the person in charge of art submissions and ask if it would be OK to send my artist CV and some images of my new work for feedback (this followed what my mentor said) and go from there. It is wise to get in touch with so many because you will get many unanswered or otherwise rejections from galleries.
The other thing she advised me to do was to apply to join the artist society of my city. This is very beneficial as you will most likely be able to get a piece of your work into the city’s art gallery and access to talks and meetings of the artist society – for instance, very often they have speakers from UK galleries. She also advised me to look for local publications to get featured in or to do i.e. a print giveaway for a local charity connected to my work (for instance a mental health charity) and try to get into the local newspaper for exposure about your work. She suggested to even try contacting the city’s art gallery for advice and also because our art gallery often promotes art of a ‘pop art’ nature – of which my new work reflects.
All in all I was given some great ideas and another list of things I can do to start some exposure on work. In addition to this definitely visit more art fairs and most of all SPEAK to gallery representatives about how it works in representing artists!
I had a great talk with my first artist, and found her to be very straight to the point and sometimes quite harsh my work and the steps I need to take to get to where I want to be. I now have another small list of things I need to do to start things in motion. It involves now trying to ‘move in different circles’ (as she put it) but better ones to improve and really start my career. I came away feeling half inspired and capable…and half shot down. It was a shame it was such a busy pub and there was more I could have talked to her about. I was eager to listen to what she had to say and am going to try and find a time to talk to her again in the future.
Thank you for taking the time to read, comments and feedback are always welcome! And join me again in around a week’s time for the latest updates and progress!
