Last Thursday morning I sipped my coffee and flipped through the 2007 Coeur d'Alene Art Auction catalog. My father-in-law is a collector of Western, Wildlife, and Sporting art and often deals with this particular auction, which is held annually in Reno. Although I have never really been interested in this genre (artists who specialize in cowboy, Indian, pioneer, cattle and horse subjects), it's an unbelievably profitable market. As I listened to my father-in-law talk about living artists such as Robert Abbett, whose work sells for $30,000. to $40,000. and Roy Anderson, whose paintings fetch $40,000. to $50,000....and others who sell for much more; I could literally feel myself being sucked into a spiral of negative thoughts..."you are a nobody...you are a child playing a game among masters...you are lucky if you get a show at the local arts council...your annual sells are only $xxxx...you call yourself a professional artist?"
Then, like an angel, my mother-in-law pops in from the kitchen with a newspaper clipping from the Wall Street Journal. A Work in Progress: Buying Art on the Web -- Saatchi Online Offers a View of Nascent Internet Market; Seeing 500 Artists in a Night.
Having lived in England, I am familiar with the well-known art collector and the influence he has in the art world. As I read the article, a load lifted from my shoulders; I was no longer a nobody among masters, I was a nobody among many other nobodies just like me, trying like heck to make it as an artist. The following is an excerpt from the article:
"In August, the staff asked a randomly selected 1,000 artists on the site how much art they sell on the site per week; the 41% who responded said their combined sales amounted to $30,000 a week. Last month, his staff [Saatchi] posed the same question to a different group of 2,000 artists on the site; about a quarter replied, and their combined weekly sales topped $88,280.
...Regine Freise, a set and stage designer from Berlin, says her realistic portraits had been turned down by at least 40 Berlin galleries before she posted a few on Saatchi's site in May. Within 24 hours, she had sold one, "Teabreak," for around $1,300. She has since sold two other paintings to a Swiss collector, bringing her art sales on the site so far this year to about $5,600, up from "none" the year before. "I'm just amazed," she says.
Nicole Asendorf, a recent art-school graduate from Cottekill, N.Y., posted her work on Saatchi's site over a year ago. In March, she found her first taker: Ugallery.com, another online art-selling site, which has since signed her to a contract to use their site to sell her abstract paintings for anywhere from $20 to $1,200 apiece. (Ugallery gets an undisclosed cut of her proceeds.) Total sales so far: just over $1,200 for 54 paintings, she says, adding, "I just want my stuff to sell."
It wasn't so much the hope of actually selling my work through Saatchi that made me smile, it was the feeling of comradery among emerging artists. Needless to say, I have hitched my wagon to the Saatchi website: Saatchi Gallery Online. What do I have to lose?
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