the pleasure, passion,power and panache of painting

35
However, it is a social network and probably worth the money, if nothing else you can name the ‘Gallery’ on the
‘exhibited’ tab on your website. And secure a plethora of artists friends who are in the same boat as you, and could
conceivably help to get your work, and name, around the general art world scene.
...how about selling on the internet and creating a virtual reality set of
exhibitions on your own website?
Sure, but I would suggest for that to be really successful, (i.e. selling on a regular basis for a consistent period of time)
the artist will need a very good e-commerce enabled website (i.e. one that is not cheap to acquire and maintain) - And
spend a great deal of time making strategic posts on social media - Or hire someone to do that specific task, and with a
regular advertising budget. In this case I would suggest an annual budget for Marketing and PR of in excess £3000 per
annum, for doing it all yourself, or £5000 to £8,000 annually, to hand this ‘job’ over to a professional full time SEO and
art marketeer to do it for you. Who will no doubt, not give you any guarantee of a return for your money. Or, enter a
compettion and get noticed by winning it?
And why not, that’s if you can live with the rejection element, nine out of ten times of entering them, that according
to their pre-publicity, ‘give You the chance of lifetime’ to be internationally famous. Let’s be honest here, it’s a bit of
lottery. The important thing to remember is, who are the judges? Usually there is an academic, a curator, another well
known person who knows (not a lot) about art and the winner from the previous years competition. So the winning
entries are somewhat vacuous in their preferences because of their own bias to one form of art or another.
There again, if you actually ‘win’ or come second or third, what does it bring you? Well, if it’s a National
Competition,’ then about 15 minutes of fame and a commission from the sponsors of the Competition, and loads of
Facebook likes and messages of congratulations. Plus, maybe 3 minutes on a You Tube video interview or a feature in
your local newspaper. The rest of the smaller comp’s are really a bit like Vanity Galleries, except they don’t make so
much money. It can cost around £30 to enter three paintings to an ‘average’ competition - And if you are short listed
you have to physically take your paintings to a central point - for ‘further judging’ and then schlep them back again
(when rejected), which can cost you up to ‘whatever’- depending how far away you live form the nominated place of
‘drop-off’. The on line ‘competitions, to my mind, are simply a money gathering exercise, full stop. And in my opinion,
are really not worth bothering with (unless they are free to enter of course). If my experience(s) of ‘unknown’ Artists
exhibiting endeavours, ones that I have come to discover or hear of, over these last 40 years in the Art world, sounds
to be full of negative thinking and perhaps a little depressing, well that may well be true, but I have tried to be down
to earth, and look at the whole arts selling ‘ball game’ realistically. To balance that train of negativity and on a more
positive note, there is another and I think I know a way of exhibiting your
Art at a reasonable cost, a far better way than vanitiy galleries or competitions....
. . .I’ll tell you all about it, in the next issue of Tubes................. Spike’ © painters Tubes. 2017