Auctioning art

How to transform from an artist selling postcards at the local craft market to one who sells art for thousands is the question on most artists minds.

Assuming that an artist has merit and such prerequisites the rest is surely branding and marketing. The more sought after an artist becomes the more value the art has. Price is after all what the purchaser is willing to pay.

To this end we are going to be using auction houses to sell some of our art. The disadvantages are obvious, no personal touch, crippling commission charges amongst the many. The more subtle advantages are that the name of the artist then starts to become 'tracked' through the various and so important art databases. Hopefully this adds to the snowball of publicity.

Ramazzoti art colony

Ramazzoti art colony was the residency that Maja and I stayed at over the summer. I have finally got around to editing Wikipedia to reflect both the colony as well as East European colonies in general.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_colony

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Ramazzoti

Harbour Lights Exhibition

Maja has yet another exhibition of her paintings, her 3rd this year! It starts today at Ocean Village in Southampton and features all new work not previously exhibited in this country. Obviously it's all for sale if you're looking to fill that gap on the wall.

IB Studios Bournemouth

Life has been pretty busy with the academic year starting again and all that brings. Maja has 2 exhibitions before Christmas with everything to do for that and one of those is a joint exhibition with me so I'm pretty flat out as well.

With all this going on it's a wonder that there's any time to still be doing photo shoots, but none the less I've managed 2 different group shoots at the fabulous IB studios in Bournemouth. The first shoot was a group shoot through TFP Models a nice little resource for photographers, the second was an in-house shoot run by the studio. It's not the biggest studio or the best equipment wise, but they have a fantastic range of props and a very friendly and helpful owner. I would recommend them to anyone in the Bournemouth area who needs a studio for shooting.

I'll put the results up on http://www.flickr.com/photos/ben_hill/ as I get the chance.

Update on Maja Dzartovska-Hill links

Maja has a lot of stuff on the web, most of it fairly boring stuff. Finding her can be a little confusing as she has no had 3 different surnames! Dzartovska, Dzartovska-Hill and Hill. This is just a list of some of the more relevant stuff:

Maja's Web Site
Maja's Blog
Maja's Teaching (distance learning)
Maja at the National Gallery
Maja's Wikipedia entry