Mary Adam, visual artist

I’ve been thinking about online art sites, specifically those that offer artists a platform for selling their work. It’s getting to be big business with new sites popping up all about the place.

Of course the aim is to make money. Some take a commission on sales; some charge a monthly or annual fee and some do both. Some do both AND charge a fee for promoting those artists who are willing to pay. 

The elements of these sites are: the owners and managers; the artists; the artworks; and the clientele, the collectors who buy the art.

Some of the sites I know of are Artfinder, Artmajeur (French), Vango, Artgallery.co.uk, Saatchi, and  Zatista.

​What about the standard of the work? Some sites vet the quality of the work, others don’t. Quality is a matter of controversy because who is to decide what is good, bad or indifferent? The answer to that  is art schools generally, judging the work of tens of thousands of artists every year against various criteria, after three or more years of intensive teaching and learning. Also juried exhibitions. The judgments made depend to a large extent on the quality of the jurors. Often artists decide whether to submit work to a jury only if they feel that the work of the juror(s) has merit. But it means that even with juries there is much variability in quality. Galleries too make judgments of quality or merit and accept or reject artists accordingly, among many other reasons.

Prices vary widely among artists and artworks. Some sites have a minimum, for example the Saatchi online gallery has a minimum of £100.00. Until recently Artfinder had no minimum and some artists were selling large numbers of works at £1.00 or even less. Now Artfinder has a minimum of £20.00. In the Caribbean I heard of doctors in a poor island selling prescriptions on the corner for 25 cents. Times are hard. 

It’s a complicated scenario. Is it better to have work on many sites? Or stick to just one site plus one’s own website (mandatory these days). For now, online is the only feasible option for me, having had to cancel “real” art fairs for health reasons. So I have to think some more about the issues around online sites and make decisions. 

The first thing I did in January 2017  was to make a planning calendar for the year and to fill in or block out anything that was definite. There was the Kingston Artists Open Studios in June and two art fairs, one in October and one in November. Also visits to Ireland in March, May and the end of June.

I gave up the Kingston studio in November 2016. Whenever I was there I always seemed to need something that was at home and vice versa. The commuting took a big chunk out of the day as well. Instead I made some space in the spare bedroom. Although rather small it's been a better arrangement,

Everything was fine until I started having an unusual back pain sometime in May. It put me in the hospital in mid-August and it has wiped out the rest of the year — I had to cancel both art fairs, unfortunately. But I did manage the Open Studios in June and met some lovely people including artists. 

In in the first half of the year I made some ink drawings and simple watercolours of the Common and other things. They were a way of getting to know my new surroundings better. 

They were mostly what I had to show in the Kingston Open Studios. I haven't loaded them onto my website yet, there are about 10 or 15 that are presentable.

​Now it's a year further on and I've made no new work since falling ill in June. But I managed to do a lot of reading and thinking and have begun tentative work on a new project.

Edited Jan 31 to remove the Artfinder link as I have closed my page on there.