Art

[It's Snake Pliskin]

How do people earn a living from painting etc?

Do art galleries make it possible for unknown painters to display their work?

Any experiences please feel free to tell.

 

[chops_a_must]

How do people earn a living from painting etc?

Do art galleries make it possible for unknown painters to display their work?

Any experiences please feel free to tell.

Most don't and wont ever earn a living from art, or even close to it.

Art galleries wont make it possible for unknown painters/ artists to display work per se. Even most award winners wont get their work displayed in the state gallery. Know a few premier's art award winners that no longer bother trying to get work hung here in the WA art gallery. How's that for a cultural void?

That is opposed to Commercial galleries, that will have prices displayed and usually a shop front etc. If it is an unknown artist, usually the commissions will be higher, as they know they can get it out of the artist. The unknown artist not really having a choice. But it is entirely up to the personal relationship between artist and gallery owner as to them being displayed etc.

Most artists will have to produce commissions and easily "sellable" items until their reputation, clientele etc builds up, or they get attention etc whence they plan to produce work they actually want to do, as they can then be sold as easily as before.

Cheers,
Chops.

 

[Dawgonnit]

Assuming you have the ability, in my experience it is possible. If you are starting out, there are galleries where you can pay for the space to put on an exhibition for a couple of weeks. A good idea is to have a "group show" with some friends, perhaps based around a theme. This gets your name out there. You can keep doing this (hopefully selling some paintings on the way) until you pick up some interest from a commercial gallery.
Or you could go straight to a commercial gallery with slides of your work, but even if its good, they are less likely to be interested if they can't see that you have a history of exhibiting - it shows you are serious about painting. Best to approach a gallery with some shows under your belt.

Another path is to enter your work into Art competitions (they have the Rotary Art Show in Adelaide). These shows attract a lot of people - but their tastes tend to be quite conservative (think landscapes, still lifes), which is OK if thats the market you are trying to crack. If you win one of the prizes, you can get a lot of interest.

Hope this helps..

 

[krisbarry]

How do people earn a living from painting etc?

.

They don't its as simple as that...Most artist work for free, or never work in the industry or work for very little for most of thier lives and its only when they die that their artwork is appreciated and profited from.

I am an artist by trade, and never made a cent out of it, got sick of the rejection within the industry and moved right away from it. The average artist earns $6,000 more than the dole, and yes for the most of my life I have fitted into the exact mould of a true artist...its struggle street all the way.

Its amazing that since of have left the industry that I gained much more wealth. By gaining more wealth I am able to practise my art as a hobby and not as a profession.

My advice to young people is not to bother being an artist as a profession, just do it for a hobby

 

[wayneL]

I have a friend who does botanical illustrations for a living, in watercolour. Beautiful work, though he insists that he is an "illustrator" and not an artist.

He gets commissions from unis and botanical gardens all over the world.

 

[2020hindsight]

Assuming you have the ability, in my experience it is possible. ...
Another path is to enter your work into Art competitions

dawg (and chops and snake et al )
speaking of talent - check out some of these
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=spray+painting&search=Search

(another path is the footpath?)

This is a good one - (no stencils etc - where a purist might argue you are cheating) - as long as you don't mind getting spyware warnings - and have anti virus installed etc,
http://www.unoriginal.co.uk/footage66_2.html spray painting

 

[It's Snake Pliskin]

Yes it is a sad state of affairs indeed. It seems the cultural void in Australia is not only in art but music too.
Go to Vienna and Paris to get perspectives and come back to Rugby League and RSL clubs etc...........

Thanks for the information everyone.

 

[Julia]

Sorry, folks, for diverting somewhat from the topic, but I can't help being reminded of one of my school reports when I was about 15. It read:
"Julia's artistic talent lies deeply concealed".
Needless to say, a career in the wonderful world of art appeared to be off the list of possibilities.

 

[visual]

How do people earn a living from painting etc?

Do art galleries make it possible for unknown painters to display their work?

Any experiences please feel free to tell.

Snake I swear this happened about two hours ago,
the boy down the road knocked on our door,he`s about 6 or 7 and asked if we would like to buy some of his paintings,he had a whole bunch of drawings in a folder ,looked like he`d been sitting at the kitchen table just drawing lines in different colours on lots of a4 .

So maybe if artists want to make a living they could take a leaf out of his book.

 

[2020hindsight]

I'm gonna call this art ..
this is the 21st century after all
and compared to Brett Whiteley its damned tame ... lol

The Vitruvian Man is a world-renowned drawing with accompanying notes created by Leonardo da Vinci around the year 1492 as recorded in one of his journals. It depicts a nude male figure in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and simultaneously inscribed in a circle and square. The drawing and text are sometimes called the Canon of Proportions or, less often, Proportions of Man. It is stored in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, Italy, but is only displayed on special occasions.[1][2]

Description
This image exemplifies the blend of art and science during the Renaissance and provides the perfect example of Leonardo's keen interest in proportion. In addition, this picture represents a cornerstone of Leonardo's attempts to relate man to nature. Encyclopaedia Britannica online states, "Leonardo envisaged the great picture chart of the human body he had produced through his anatomical drawings and Vitruvian Man as a cosmografia del minor mondo (cosmography of the microcosm). He believed the workings of the human body to be an analogy for the workings of the universe." It is also believed by some that Leonardo symbolized the material existence by the square and spiritual existence by the circle. Thus he attempted to depict the correlation between these two aspects of human existence.[3] According to Leonardo's notes in the accompanying text, written in mirror writing, it was made as a study of the proportions of the (male) human body as described in a treatise by the Ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, who wrote that in the human body:

a palm is the width of four fingers
a foot is the width of four palms
a cubit is the width of six palms
a man's height is four cubits (and thus 24 palms)
a pace is four cubits
the length of a man's outspread arms is equal to his height
the distance from the hairline to the bottom of the chin is one-tenth of a man's height
the distance from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin is one-eighth of a man's height
the maximum width of the shoulders is a quarter of a man's height
the distance from the elbow to the tip of the hand is one-fifth of a man's height
the distance from the elbow to the armpit is one-eighth of a man's height
the length of the hand is one-tenth of a man's height
the distance from the bottom of the chin to the nose is one-third of the length of the head
the distance from the hairline to the eyebrows is one-third of the length of the face
the length of the ear is one-third of the length of the face
Leonardo is clearly illustrating Vitruvius' De architectura 3.1.3 which reads:

The navel is naturally placed in the centre of the human body, and, if in a man lying with his face upward, and his hands and feet extended, from his navel as the centre, a circle be described, it will touch his fingers and toes. It is not alone by a circle, that the human body is thus circumscribed, as may be seen by placing it within a square. For measuring from the feet to the crown of the head, and then across the arms fully extended, we find the latter measure equal to the former; so that lines at right angles to each other, enclosing the figure, will form a square.
The multiple viewpoint that set in with Romanticism has convinced us that there is no such thing as a universal set of proportions for the human body. The field of anthropometry was created in order to describe these individual variations. Vitruvius' statements may be interpreted as statements about average proportions. Vitruvius goes through some trouble to give a precise mathematical definition of what he means by saying that the navel is the center of the body, but other definitions lead to different results; for example, the center of mass of the human body depends on the position of the limbs, and in a standing posture is typically about 10 cm lower than the navel, near the top of the hip bones.

Well - I've added Vitruvian woman - who is much more supple ( and arguably a bit less subtle)
It's more about simple enjoyment of beauty

 

[chops_a_must]

How do people earn a living from painting etc?

Do art galleries make it possible for unknown painters to display their work?

Any experiences please feel free to tell.

Just thought I'd let people in the Perth area know that I'll be organising two art exhibitions next year.

One is a minor exhibit at the Oceanus restaurant at City Beach, in April.

The other is going to be rather large, at the Moore's Building, Fremantle in July. One of the largest and most important galleries in Freo, and hence WA. I'm co-organising this one, but am also going to be the major, or one of the major sponsors of this exhibition.

I just thought I'd let people know about it, as we will be looking for sponsors. If you are considering helping, keep in mind it does not have to be much at all, and any help will be much appreciated. All sponsors will receive excellent exposure to the local community, and the region at large, with thousands of people in traffic expected at each exhibition at the Moore's Building. Plus it can be used as a tax offset.

I know it is a long way off now, and I will rustle some more support up closer to the date, but if you are potentially interested in sponsoring this event, or even if you are just an interested member of the public, PM me and I will keep you up to date with the progress along the way.

Cheers,
Chops.

 

[explod]

I have a friend who does botanical illustrations for a living, in watercolour. Beautiful work, though he insists that he is an "illustrator" and not an artist.

He gets commissions from unis and botanical gardens all over the world.

Yes he is correct. There are a number of catigories in the arts from Kraft, Illustration (your friend) Realistic (like you see in a photo) and then the various Isms (cubism etc) in what is called Fine Art. The latter is regarded as the real art as it is creative. This is best understood by thinking of art as "idea" or the devolopment of a concept. When doing my MA in Fine Art some years ago my "proposal" a paper explaining my concept/idea was the more difficult task but probably the most rewarding because in making me explain to others what it was about I learnt more about my own creative being and therefore opened up new directions for my idea.

Money in it. Well, luck, style and where you are at in society plays a big part. As a student I shared space with John Kelly, he got onto square cows and has risen to the top with exhibits throughout Europe.

For me, my work revolves around line and optics and a part of it plays with the space frame (what we see at a glance) and its instinctive frequencies.

Maybe something will still come from it. I was into art from a child but entered the academic side too late. It is a big trip emotionally and my personal family situation was bad some years ago which stifles creativity. If I cannot do it properly I will not touch it at all.

 

[2020hindsight]

nailing his ideas to the wall...

(when it comes to achieving an unusual artwork - this bloke has nailed it )

 

[2020hindsight]

this one speaks for itself
more a snafu than art

 

[2020hindsight]

Max Ernst

Max Ernst (April 2, 1891 -- April 1, 1976) was a German Dadaist and surrealist artist.
Max Ernst was born in Brühl, Germany, near Cologne. In 1909, he enrolled in the University at Bonn to study philosophy but soon abandoned the courses. He began painting that year.

During World War I he served in the German army, which was a momentus interruption in his career as an artist. He stated in his autobiography, "Max Ernst died the 1st of August, 1914".

After the war, filled with new ideas, Ernst, Jean Arp and social activist Alfred Grünwald, formed the Cologne, Germany Dada group. In 1918 he married the art historian Luise Straus — a stormy relationship that would not last. (She died in Auschwitz in 1944.) In 1919 Ernst visited Paul Klee and created paintings, block prints and collages, and experimented with mixed media.

In 1922, he returned to the artistic community at Montparnasse in Paris. In Montparnasse he was a central figure in the birth of André Breton's desire to ostracize Ernst's friend Paul Éluard from the surrealist group.

Constantly experimenting, in 1925 he invented a graphic art technique called frottage, which uses pencil rubbings of objects as a source of images. The next year he collaborated with Joan Miró on designs for Sergei Diaghilev. With Miró's help, Ernst pioneered grattage in which he troweled pigment from his canvases.

Ernst developed a fascination with birds that was prevalent in his work. His alter ego in paintings, which he called Loplop, was a bird. He suggested this alter-ego was an extension of himself stemming from an early confusion of birds and humans. He said his sister was born soon after his bird died. Loplop often appeared in collages of other artists' work, such as Loplop presents André Breton.

Ernst drew a great deal of controversy with his 1926 painting The Virgin Chastises the infant Jesus before Three Witnesses: André Breton, Paul Éluard, and the Painter.

In 1927 he married Marie-Berthe Aurenche. It is said that "his relationship with her may have inspired the erotic subject matter of this painting and others of this year."

Ernst began to sculpt in 1934, and spent time with Alberto Giacometti.

In 1938, the American heiress Peggy Guggenheim acquired a number of Max Ernst's works which she displayed in her new museum in London.

Following the onset of World War II, Ernst was detained as an enemy alien in France but with the assistance of the American journalist Varian Fry in Marseille, he managed to escape the country with Peggy Guggenheim. He left behind his lover, Leonora Carrington, and she suffered a major mental breakdown. Ernst and Guggenheim arrived in the United States in 1941 and were married the following year. Along with other artists and friends (Marcel Duchamp and Marc Chagall) who had fled from the war and lived in New York City, Ernst helped inspire the development of Abstract expressionism.

His marriage to Guggenheim did not last, and in Beverly Hills, California in October of 1946, in a double ceremony with Man Ray and Juliet Browner, he married Dorothea Tanning. The couple first made their home in Sedona, Arizona.

In 1948 Ernst wrote the treatise Beyond Painting. As a result of the publicity, he began to achieve financial success.

In 1953 he and Tanning moved to a small town in the south of France where he continued to work. The City, and the Galeries Nationales du Grand-Palais in Paris published a complete catalogue of his works.

Ernst died on April 1, 1976, in Paris, France and was interred there in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.

 

[2020hindsight]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/08/2238858.htm?section=justin

Ledger portrait wins Archibald People's prize
Posted 13 minutes ago

A portrait of actor Heath Ledger has been declared the people's favourite in this year's Archibald prize, with 32,000 people voting.

Vincent Fantauzzo won the People's Choice award for his painting Heath, which was finished just two weeks before the actor's death in January.

Fantauzzo says winning the People's Award is as important to him as the main prize.

"I think this painting was extra special because Heath and I really collaborated and we took the idea really seriously," he said.

"I'd like to thank Heath also and Heath's family for all of their support during the exhibition."

 

[Kauri]

I have a piece of "Elephant Art"... bought at the perth Zoo... painted by Tricia... helps support them... butt.. saw this on the net the tother day.. meant to be painted by an Elephant O/S somewheres... but methinks it may be fake.. .. or someone has one very talented Elephant!!!!

Cheers
.............Kauri

 

[prawn_86]

How do people earn a living from painting etc?

Do art galleries make it possible for unknown painters to display their work?

Any experiences please feel free to tell.

My partner is an artist, but is fairly resigned to the fact that it is a hobby and she will not make money to live off of.

For someone like her it is made even more difficult as her paintings take about 6 months to complete, so to get a decent portfolio of them will take decades.

We have a few ideas about how to sell/make $$ but it all comes down to having a lot available, which she doesnt at the moment

 

[2020hindsight]

Here's another of the Archiband finalists -
plus a painting by William Van Haecht, late 1500's early 1600's, Flemish.
"The Visit of Alexander the Great to Apelle's Studio" (?)


https://www.aussiestockforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=178538&highlight=alexander#post178538

 

[2020hindsight]

As for that painting by Haecht (with some timewarp of Alexander bought forward in time), I first ran into it as a jigsaw puzzle in Avoca (the coffee house there).
It was a classic! almost a whole wall - Hate to think how long it took em to do the damned thing.