No Title

No Title 03/24/2011

People often ask me where my ideas come from. If you are a visual person, ideas are everywhere. I have painted all of my life, and have always been struck by interesting shapes and beautiful colors in my environment. I have fond memories of a small porcelain Indochinese tea set sitting on a dusty shelf, breath-taking landscapes viewed from the back seats of old cars, mountain creeks with shiny jewel-like pebbles, stain glass windows during a boring, hot summer-day sermon, sunshine bouncing off the peach fuzz on someone's cheek.... Everywhere I have been and go, I am surrounded by paintable compositions.

As a small child, my mother introduced me to watercolors. Later I received a B.A. in English with a teaching minor in art, and history
When I decided to make art my full time career, I devised a three part strategy. I started by exhibiting at local galleries and at weekend outdoor art & crafts shows. I also researched and queried regional publishers and submitted some concepts . Happily, I received positive interest from an established publisher, and started by published a few posters.

Since I didn't know the first thing about selling art, I spent a few months walking local public art events with my husband, taking notes on what other artists were doing. I also introduced myself to artists, explaining that I was a "newbie" and asked lots of questions about show set-up requirements, fees, how they priced their artwork, etc.
Gallery sales were erratic and couldn't sustain supporting children. So, I added outdoor weekend shows to my art repertoire. My husband heroically built a booth from scratch and taught himself to mat and frame watercolors like a professional. I could not have succeeded without his continual support. Throughout all of this time, I was a voracious reader of art technique books, and continually experimented with new methods and materials.

The best advise for success I ever received was from an artist with a booth full of beautiful watercolors, who seemed very busy. During a down time, while sipping a beer, he took me aside and said, "Find an artist who does work similar to yours. Because you are new, take his prices and reduce them by half. Set up a small, inexpensive booth.
If people buy, you are in business, if not..... find another career."
Sounds rather harsh, and I laughed at the time, but he was right. Since I thought my work could be similar to his, my husband adopted his pricing structure, but, without the discount!

After I spent a few years on the local show and gallery circuit, our income was still deficient. During this time period we had begun to work with the owner of a San Francisco based pre-press company. This man was the first publisher on the West Coast, to pioneer the giclee' process as applied to fine art. He generously offered to deeply discount printing giclee's of my artwork in exchange for our purchasing in minimum quantities. This gave us the ability to reproduce all of my imagery in the latest state-of-the-art format, on an as-needed basis....a revolutionary concept in our industry at the time. Prior to this, an artist had to place a one thousand minimum quantity print run order to get a reasonable price. This was a formula for guaranteed economic disaster unless the artist had a strong distribution channel set up. How many artist have this kind of business savvy? To this day, many artists have thousands of unsold prints in storage.

Having the ability to print high quality reproductions, as they were ordered, gave us the incentive to try selling on a national level.
We did this for several years by exhibiting at prominent shows like the New York Art Expo where we had our first large scale order from a Japanese fine art distributor for one hundred prints of several images from one of my minature watercolor series. We also exhibited at The National Print Show and Atlanta Gift Shows.

During this time period, I realized that I still needed to gear up my income, and this could only happen with increased national exposure. I was now reading many art business magazines to keep current with trends and show information. In one magazine, I turned to a section devoted to a well-known watercolorist famous for her beautiful floral illustrations.
At the conclusion of the section was the name of a licensing agent. We gave him a call. The result was that we worked successfully together for a decade with over sixty manufacturers and through hundreds of product designs. The relationship with an agent is not unlike most relationships. It takes it's course. We had a productive run together, and as a team, created the exposure my artwork needed, and the expansion of his client base.

Today, with the help of my husband, Terry Faylor, I am self-represented. This change allows me to have direct contact with manufacturers. It has allowed me to eliminate unnecessary layers between my art concept and manufacture-ready designs. It allows me to communicate immediately and directly with product decision makers, and immediately provide revisions when needed. Having a fully equipped state-of-the-art studio, a partner knowledgeable in business practise, and the ongoing desire to paint, is pretty much all I need.

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Anne Ormsby

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