Building Relationships

One of the most interesting and rewarding aspects of being an artist is when people attend an exhibition of your work and want to engage with you and ask about your paintings and the story behind the compositions. Some artists are wary of approaching people who are looking at their work but in my experience people almost universally like meeting the artist and chatting about the work, asking about my painting technique and my background as a professional artist. Sometimes this leads to the person buying a painting or print there and then and at other times the person may come and visit a subsequent exhibition of mine (as long as I took their e-mail address for my mailing list).

Some of my best customers and pupils for my portrait painting classes originally engaged with me a long time ago. In fact I can think of at least two people who have bought my work in the last twelve months who first expressed an interest around five years ago. So building relationships as an artist is sometimes a slow burn thing.

So whether I am exhibiting in a solo exhibition as I have done recently, at an art event such as The Affordable Art Fair or opening my studio to the public as I do once a year, if you are interested in art my message to you is simple - let’s chat - there may even be a glass of wine in it for you!