Swapping your paintings or art with galleries?

A gallery buys a body of your work. Several years later there are a few pieces which remain unsold. The gallery decides they want new fresh art or in my case, paintings. However, during this time your work has increased in price, so your paintings are now worth more. Do you do a direct swap or do you ask for the difference in price between what you sold them the original work for, and the new work? I tried the first approach and the gallery went ballistic. What's your view?

Not made in China!

At a recent show I met a great couple who were wearing these T-shirts whilst selling their locally made wall-hangings. Chatting to galleries as well, it seems like cheap Eastern imports are posing a real threat to certain sectors of the art market. When you can land a 'painting' here for less than the equivilant sized blank canvas would cost me, I get their point. I am tired of people taking photos of my work, in many cases to make prints of it no doubt. I caught a woman with a Hasselblad (seriously high-end camera) shooting images of my work the other day not, as she told me, because she "likes taking photographs" I'm sure. I've even had monks in orange robes snap away merrily, not to mention the endless i-phone snapping others. To add insult to injury overheard two woman walk into my stand and say: "these of course all are copied art from China."
Gallery owners report people coming to their galleries at night and shooting paintings through the windows no doubt to be send overseas and turned into cheap production line replicas, which no artist could hope to compete with price wise.
Point is if the practise continues, it could seriously affect creativitity - what's the point if every idea/style you have gets stolen from you and replicated in 1,000s before your paint has had time to dry? Most of the work I've seen is seriously bad 'decor' type work, so not giving me sleepless nights yet, but at the lower end of the market ie. for people wanting to break into the affordable art scene it could have a very negative effect.

The Good, the Bad and the extremely Ugly - ripp-off artists

Tales of artists being taken advantage of abound, as do stories of artist's work being copied. Here's a true example of both:
The Good: Take a quaint tourist town, a gallery owner and an artist. Things initially go well.
The Bad:Then the gallery owner starts stalling payments to the artist, his rent falls into arrears etc. Enter the sherrif of the court who seizes the gallery and its consigned contents. The artists are unable to retrieve their works, which get auctioned off to reimburse the landlord. Fleeing debt and disgrace, the gallery owner dissapears to a foreign country.
The Ugly: A few years later a new, flashy gallery opens in the same town, the owner (now bouyant it is said from family $$), being the self same badass. Only there is now a twist:- he is the artist as well as the gallery owner. His 'inspiration' none other than the artist whose work he had previously hung. This is not just 'similarity' but straight ripp-offs, however not being an artist, his lack of skill does embarrasingly come through to even the vaguely skilled eye. (Unfortunately it must be said vaguely skilled eyes are not always common in the general public.) The true artist does not have the funds to sue (as is the case with most artists), so our parasitic pal continues his practice. Given the art though, I doubt it will be for long - such people have a way of parting with their money.
As an aside, neither party is known personally to me, was just one of the worst cases of artistic abuse I've come across.

Getting conned out of cash - gallery scam

Here is an interesting scam from my pal Stephen regarding galleries and markups:
I made a little discovery which I would like to share with you, which you can then pass on. I am arithmetically challenged, as are many creative people, and I always assumed galleries weren't out to screw me. I was wrong. Apart from some of the other tricks art dealers pull, there is a subtle one that can slip by unnoticed, and it always leaves the artist out of pocket. The culprit is the mark up structure used by some galleries.
An artist in the fortunate position of being able to sell a work with immediate payment, has no concern about what happens to the work thereafter. The gallery can mark it up any way it any it likes. It can add on as much as 100% or as little as 2%, or even throw it on a bonfire.  The artist has been paid, end of story.
However, those poor souls who leave work on consignment are the ones at risk. The scam works like this:
The artist wants R1000 for his piece. The gallery agrees to carry it on consignment, and puts on a mark up of - for example - 30% This means the piece will now have a ticket price of R1300.

 Some time later, the piece is sold. The gallery claims it's 30% of the ticket price of R1300.  And here is where it goes a bit wobbly. 30% of R1300 is R390. Subtract the R390 from the ticket price of R1300, and the artist is getting only R910. Not the R1000 they were originally asking for. Some galleries do this through ignorance, some do it intentionally. It's easy to be caught. For purposes of my example, I used relatively small sums of money. But if the artist wants R10 000 for a piece, and the above flawed system is used with a mark up of say 60%, you get the followng result:

 ARTISTS PRICE = R10 000

GALLERY 60% MARK UP = R6 000

TOTAL TICKET PRICE= R16 000

 Then, when the piece is sold, it is incorrectly worked back as follows:

 TOTAL TICKET PRICE = R16 000

GALLERY 60% "MARK UP" = R9600

ARTIST RECEIVES = R6400

 This is R3600 LESS THAN IS DUE TO THE ARTIST!

 The correct way to work the percentage back is as follows:

 TOTAL TICKET PRICE = R16 000

HOW GALLERY SHOULD WORK OUT 60% "MARK UP" : Ticket price R16 000 divided by 1.6

ARTIST RECEIVES = R1000

This is the same method used by SARS to calculate VAT

On top of this, the gallery might make all sorts of deals (10% off for cash to the gallery's client, for example) which my little brain simply can't even begin to work out. 
Have you experienced this? I have, and once I allowed myself to accept this kind of warped arithmetic, I couldn't escape the "bullying" tactics of the gallery.
Hope this is useful to you.

Galleries loaning art out

An artist called me the other day very distressed. Appears that she had got an email from a client who wanted to buy one of her works. She called the gallery who had the work on consignment, only to be told that the work was out on loan. It appears the gallery was hiring work out to clients who whether for financial reasons or variety did not want to actually buy the work. This is common in New Zealand for instance and should benefit all parties except for this galleries 'omission' to inform the artist (and part with some of their loan fee.) Fees for hiring to film sets in particular, can be considerable, so make sure that you inform your gallery (preferably in writing), that should they loan your work out you want to be informed as well as receive a say 50% portion of the fee.

To discount or not? That is the question.

I received this question from another artist: "I have had work in my local gallery for some years now, but sales have now dropped off badly. (The economy, I guess) Currently I have no other gallery through which to cycle the works; as the paintings are more than a year old, what are your thoughts on discounting/marking-down? I need the money, but what effect will this have on my “image”?"

We were discussing markdowns at a gallery the other day – a well known artist has cut his prices by about 50%.

My feeling is that this was not a good move and would severely upset people who have bought his work in the past and now feel cheated because it’s worth so much less.

Also would position him as an artist on his way down not up so would not inspire confidence.

But it does rely naturally on how much work you have sold into the market – if its hundreds of pieces that hundreds of people who are going to be miffed.

If only a few then not such a serious move.

Still times are tough and you need to eat. So the way we felt best is to hold ones prices BUT make it clear to the gallery that you would be prepared to negotiate if that would swing the deal.

That way the client feels they have got a good deal and your pricing/image remains intact.

This does rely heavily on the integrity of the gallery, to be honest about when they have sold work for less and when not.

Better move though would be to find a few more galleries so you can  shift works around.

So often a painting that has stood unsold, when moving to another gallery suddenly sells.

I'm asked regulalry (at least14-20 times a year) to donate art to varies charities to auction. One charity this year came up with a new suggestion: they would  take my works for auction and instead of just giving them away, as I normally do, they offered to pay me an agreed amount for each work – what they earned above that went to the charity.

This was a great way of helping others and also helping oneself, as getting something was better than nothing. Win/win all round.

Getting work into galleries

How do I get work into galleries when they only are prepared to see emailed images and not the real work?

Reason galleries don’t want to see you one to one is

a)      time involved – much faster to scan through an email and see if the work may be in the genre you are looking for and some galleries get 20+ artists a week. At 30 minutes a person that’s an extra day and a half per week to their workload.

b)      It’s easier emotionally to say no in an email than face to face. Is less personal.

It’s just like the writing world where books are rejected with only a brief synopsis having been read and not the actual book.

Tends to be that if one gallery who is respected has your work, then others are more receptive valuing the other galleries choice.

So the key is to crack the first respected gallery.

Dangling a carrot such as: ‘To date in my private capacity I have sold xx works, so I know there is a market out there for my work…’ may be tempting for a gallery to look further (provided of course that you have sold an impressive amount of work independently.

Try a different approach so your email stands out.

I got “The girl who bites her nails and the man who is always late” published in the UK with an opening line: “Have you ever bitten your nails? Procrastinated? Etc What does it say about you as a person? ” I figured that the person reading the email would have had one of these habits mentioned and being human would be interested in finding out more about themselves. It worked!

You’re creative so think up a fresh approach that will intrigue/astound them. It may not work every time but at least you’ll stand out from all the “Hi my name is Susan and I‘m an artist and here are some examples of my work… yawn.”

Failing stalking the owners, (not recommended) that’s about the best advice I can offer.