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Welcome to Bonnie Hamlin's Email Newsletter, no 2
Investing in Original Art by living artists
O.K. Compared to Nortel or CIT Group your
art investments are doing great!
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Most
expert will advise you to buy art you love, and not to hope you have
found the next Rembrandt. I totally agree, but I always hope that when
I purchase a painting (that I love) it will also increase in value. (I
have the same hope for the ones I paint).
So I started asking what characteristics and habits do the artists,
whose paintings end up selling for very large amount, have in common.
Here's what I looked at and found:
Age and Sex
Volume produced in a year
Persistent
Consistent
Knowledge Base
Recognizable style, based on a broad base of expertise
Marketing skills
Prices
Talent
Fads
Age and Sex:
Age seems to be the least important factor. For a variety of reasons
men tend to peak in their careers much earlier than women. But when
women are able to focus on their art careers they hit the ground
running. And rising stars of any age can suddenly disappear.
Volume produced in a year:
One thing all of today's top artists have in common is that they work hard.
For example: An artist doing 11 x 14" simple landscapes, would be
expected to paint around 300 paintings a year. An artist painting 4 x 6
foot or larger detailed scenes that tell a story and require a great
deal of research would be expected to produce 12 finished paintings
plus 30 or more small studies in a year.
Persistent:
Persistence is probably the most important. Does the artist keep
working at their painting and continually working at improving? If they
have to stop painting for a period of time (to master a new medium or
because of family issues etc.), do they keep learning and keep coming
back?
Consistent:
Creative minds tend to be inconsistent, always chasing new ideas,
trying out new mediums (oils, watercolors, etc) and new subjects or old
subjects in new ways. The ideal is an artist who has mastered the
balance between being consistent and being creative.
Knowledge base:
Has the artist mastered 2 or 3 different mediums, such as oil, pen and
ink, and watercolor even if they presently only use one of the mediums?
Does the artist have a thorough understanding of color theory, and
composition, an understanding of the subject, can he/she draw, is there
a mood, good use of light is he or she passionate about the subject?
Recognizable style based on a broad base of expertise:
Is the artist just trying to be different in order to be unique or has
the artist developed a personal recognizable style from doing a large
amount of good work?
Marketing skills:
An artist needs to be good at marketing their work, either to buyers at
artist's run shows or to Gallery owners or they need to partner with
someone who believes in them and can sell for them (a gallery owner,
friend, spouse). The days of artists being discovered are gone. Today's
'discoverers' are being bombarded with good artists and don't have time
to search for hermits.
Talent:
The person with good work ethics will out shine the lazy talented
person. The ideal is a talented person who has a good work ethic. Like
sports or music.
But in the end if you buy art you love, that has meaning to you, it is
hard to go wrong. Even if the painting never increases in value you
still get to enjoy it.
Does this help at all? I realized after I started on this
newsletter, that maybe this subject was to big for an email-newsletter.
Love to hear from you.
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Welcome to Bonnie Hamlin's Email Newsletter, no. 1
Hanging Fine Art
This newsletter is for anyone who enjoys fine art paintings or who would like to learn more about the art world from an artist's perspective.
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Cartoon: The cartoon is made up of the extremes of technology, sketching at one end and photography and Photoshop at the other. The paintings in this cartoon are my actual paintings, but the background is a photo with a lot of moving pixels on the computer.
A Few Notes on Hanging Paintings
How paintings are displayed can really affect the impact of the work. Here are a couple basic guidelines for hanging paintings: In a gallery, or room where people are usually standing to view the art; hallways, stairs, etc. the rule of thumb, is to have the center of each painting 60" off the floor.
An example: your painting is 20 inches high (including the frame), from the center to the top of the frame would be 10", then lift the painting by its wire and measure from there to the top of the frame, lets say 2" (Half of 20 minus 2, plus 60). You would put your hook in at 68" from the floor to have the middle of the painting at 60".
Now if your family members are over 6' tall, or your gallery caters to basket ball players, you might want to have the middle of the paintings higher (maybe 69" from the floor). If the painting is hung in a room where people tend to mostly sit, such as a dining room, the center of the paintings could be lower than 60".
Living rooms with their variety of furniture are slightly different, try to balance the shapes of the furniture with the arrangement of the paintings. A long horizontal piece might hang a few inches above a chesterfield. Or this space might have a group of smaller paintings hanging with the bottoms of the bottom row of painting all lined up at say 5" above the chesterfield.
Interior designers are the experts on hanging art, also private art galleries often have a hanging service, or you can ask the gallery owner to recommend an expert on hanging art. Just keep in mind you don't have to take their advice, it is your home or office and you have the final say.
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Latest Painting
This is my latest painting. It is the first in a series of Ranch Rodeo paintings that I'm presently working on. The paint is still wet and I haven't named it yet (its temporary title is Two on Two)
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Copyright 2009 Bonnie Hamlin. If you'd like to copy this material to other publications or email lists, please contact Bonnie Hamlin for permission. click contact or
phone: 1 204 322-5731, mail: Bonnie Hamlin, Box 25, Warren, MB R0C 3E0
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