This is a guest post by Imagekind artist Warren Keating who is an award-winning artist whose paintings reflect the culmination of 25 years in both figures and landscapes. He has had numerous solo shows of his paintings in the U.S. and Mexico, as well as having sold directly to a variety of collectors around the world. He has been featured on CNN, and has had several articles written about him in Los Angeles area newspapers. Currently, Keating is represented by several galleries in San Francisco and Los Angeles. His latest series, “Overview” was selected as an LA Times Calendar pick; it is currently exhibiting at M.J. Higgins Fine Art in Downtown L.A.

If I were talking to a particular artist, I could assess in more detail how that painter should go about finding a gallery to show his or her work, but I will attempt to give you a quick guide to how I found (and tips for how I continually find) representation.

To start, please don’t set out with the notion that you are searching for the Holy Grail of artists’ accomplishments, that a show in a renowned gallery is a silver bullet that will cure all of your art career difficulties. While I wouldn’t rule out that possibility, it is not a useful goal for the emerging artist. Rather, your goal should be to become aware of and involved in your art community, cultivate relationships with collectors, dealers, and, hopefully, museums, and become a salesman of your own work. You will need to learn to think like an art dealer. In my 20 years’ experience, when I’m busy with self-generated exhibits and don’t have time for much else, that’s when the galleries finally start calling.

1. Get The Picture

Good photography is a must when submitting, publicizing or selling your work. An inexpensive ($100) light kit with 2 fixtures containing 500 watt, color-balanced bulbs is the best light source for photographing paintings, and now you can get a really decent digital SLR camera for under a thousand dollars. If you are on a bare bones budget or in a hurry, you can use sunlight, but there will be more image-deteriorating reflection on paintings that have any sheen whatsoever. A polarizing lens is a must, to help minimize any glare from your light kit, and is absolutely necessary if you try to photography your work outside.

After I have color-adjusted and sharpened the images of my paintings, I upload them to my Imagekind account to keep copies of hi-res files of my larger paintings ready to make a large print a for a presentation or exhibit.

But, it’s also crucial to get the picture in a more allegorical sense. It’s important to make your best impression with the most appealing and accurate images of your work, a resume that says that you are a committed artist and an attitude that lets the dealer know that working with you will be a pleasurable and lucrative experience.

2. Research the Gallery

Before the rise in popularity of the Internet, the emerging artist had to drive around his or her city, or state, to visit galleries to see what kind of work was displayed within before considering whether to approach that dealer or not. Now, it’s easy to get a good feel for the dozens of galleries in an urban area within an hour without leaving your home office.

The more educated you are about the art world around you, the more quickly you can navigate it to find the venues where you fit in. Often, while an established gallery has as stable of artists, the emerging artist can find exhibit opportunities from within the up-and-coming venues. It behooves the artist to keep track of the local art scene to become aware of these new exhibit opportunities as they come into being.
When submitting, I use my very best work, and, while my paintings are all basically depicting people from overhead, I also show a variety of sizes, colors, crops, etc. and include that I have limited editions prints available of my work, high-quality giclees from Imagekind.

3. While You’re Waiting, Find Other Ways To Exhibit

Emerging artists that hit a brick wall and complain that, after approaching all of the galleries in the area, there is simply no way for them to get an exhibit. Harnessing some of that frustration, the successful artist will find a juried exhibition, country club, art fair, co-operative gallery, etc. Be wary of vanity galleries that charge hundreds or thousands for a show. Personally, I don’t think that’s the way to go, but I may opt to do that as an investment at a future date.

This year, in addition to gallery shows, I’ve participated in two major charity events in the Los Angeles area, an internationally-juried competition in Dallas, several online competitions and exhibits in Second Life, The Ventura Art Festival and I’m painting a mural at my daughter’s elementary school. Hey, many of my neighbors are a lot richer than I am and can easily afford my work.

As life often goes, once you’re busy with all of these other exhibits and are feeling overwhelmed with alternative exhibit opportunities to which you’ve said, “yes”, the galleries will start to return your calls. So, my advice to the artist that is having difficulty getting into galleries is to sell and exhibit so much that you don’t need them, and then they’ll come calling.

4. You Had Better Be Ready

Right after you read this, spend some time, hopefully in your studio, thinking about your art, where you want to be and what your next step is. Don’t be in a rush in this moment to enact your marketing plan or crank out even more alluring work in your studio. Take some time to think about why your art is important, why someone should buy it, why it should be in a museum or history book, if that is your goal, and write it all down. You can edit it later, but, after reviewing what you come up with, update your Artist’s Statement and Bio. I’m pretty much going to sell a couple of paintings on Ebay and a print or two on Imagekind no matter what I do, so it’s easy to stay busy, but I make it a point to take time out, sit in my studio, look at my paintings, analyze where I’m at and imagine where I can go.

Be honest about yourself and your art and seriously commit to whatever plan you come up with. If after you do all this, you’re in a meeting with a gallery, and something about you, or your work kills the deal and you don’t get the gig, then, consider this: A relationship with a gallery is a big, time and energy-consuming commitment. Often the dealer is saving the artist a lot of time, headache and heartache, because the dealer knows that the work will not sell to her audience.

5. Create a Brand with Social Media Networking

Instead of sitting in your studio and waiting for that big opportunity, create a following without enlisting the P.R. machine of the biggest galleries. As you create work, post it into a half dozen Social Network outlets. I take video of myself painting, and have a YouTube following. You’ll quickly find that the prolific artist that creates interesting art has more posts to share with a better audience, so you’ll become more prolific and your work, more interesting. There are experts that can explain viral marketing much better than I can, but I can tell you that a good idea (creative vision or process), wrapped in media (images, video) properly disseminated (blog post, video/image upload, link, email, comment) will most likely go viral to some degree. People can’t help share what is cool, and there’s something cool about every artist. One just has to figure out what it is, how to capture it and how to disseminate it.

Well, for those of you that are sitting around, frustrated with the rejection that you’ve received from galleries, now you have plenty of things that you can do to advance your career as an artist while you’re waiting for that big break. Good luck.

Warren Keating is an artist in Los Angeles. For more information, go to http://www.WarrenKeating.com. His original work is sold at KeatingArt.com and prints of his most popular paintings can be purchased from http://KeatingArt.imagekind.com.

Pascal Tremblay is a graphic designer / illustrator from Montreal. He has been working freelance for the past 11 years doing work for a wide variety of clients.

Pascal’s work has always been an introspective and personal way for him to express himself. He describes his work as a way to “define my emotions and thoughts in a way that when I look at it, I will know exactly how I felt at the moment I created it, but without making it definite for others.” In other words, though he has strong emotion connection with his work, it’s up to the person viewing it to decide what it means to her or him.

Where were you born, where do you live now, any other background info?

I was born in Germany but I pretty much consider myself 100% Canadian since I have lived here all my life almost. My dad was in the army so we moved around a lot and Germany was one of those places. I currently live in Montreal with my fiancee, Elaine. We’ve lived together here for 3 yrs and prior to this we lived in Malaysia for 18 months.

How would you describe your work?

That’s a good question because I never really think about stuff like that. I just like to start creating a piece and see where it leads me. I don’t really have a plan in what I do, I just let my intuition guide me. I think that, as a whole, my work could be described as a series of vague and fleeting expressions of myself. I like to keep the interpretation to the viewer and not pigeon-hole it into what I think it should be saying and, while it’s not a specific goal of mine, I do hope everyone can see a little something different in each piece. Over time I’ve been more and more abstract in what each art piece represents and my use of type has gone in the same direction.. Whereas before I might have put plainly the words I was thinking about, now they’re represented by a specific color or square, or whatever… So in a way I guess my work is a bit like an emotional puzzle to me. I always put a lot of myself into it and if I don’t feel anything intense I really cannot produce the kind of artwork I enjoy the most. That is probably why I can go for months without doing anything, I don’t force it.

What processes and techniques do you use to create your work?

I like to use a technique I coined “create and adjust”. It’s basically a semi-fancy term for “I just do whatever comes to me and then I arrange it all as I go to make it work together”. I really wish I could describe my process better but it’s really just improvisation each time. I don’t have a plan on and the more specific my concept I start with the more difficult it will be for me. If I keep it all flowing and organic it works much better. When it comes to client work I work differently and I can build towards a specific goal with no problems.. however with my personal artwork, it has to come naturally and on the fly.

Are you a full time artist?

No, I do design mostly during the day but I also have other interests that are taking more of my time these days. I do feel the need to take a break from design recently. I’ve been doing this for almost 11 yrs and I need a break. I’d say art-making is the least time-consuming part of my work. Art doesn’t pay the bills unfortunately. It doesn’t pay anything actually and it’s not why I do it anyway.

How did you get started?

I started by dropping out of college and not knowing what to do with myself. Then I discovered Flash websites and it just gripped me. I had never had any interest whatsoever in art before this (although as a kid I would spend hours re-creating country flags with coloring pencils). I just stumbled into this dormant need to express myself, it was something completely new for me and I had finally found something I was passionate about. From there I kind of shifted from Flash to artwork and into print and web.

Any notable accomplishments?

Being able to make a good living off of freelance for 10 yrs is something I am proud of.. I still haven’t received my medal for it, which is very very disappointing.

Where can we find more info and keep up with your work?

Makeshift.ca is my personal portfolio, and while I don’t update it weekly or anything be assured there’s always something new in the works. Most of my work I don’t even post because the bill-paying stuff is rarely ever too exciting or mind blowing.

What artists inspire you?

David Carson is the reason why I am here today doing what I do. Without him I would have never gone the path I chose. I’ve yet to met him. I do have an autographed Raygun magazine which I keep very dearly. It’s pretty much the only design publication I own.

There’s something about good black and white photography that always seems to amaze me. Maybe it’s the simplicity found from stripping out the color. Or the contrasts between dark and light that forces detail to the forefront. Whatever it is, there is something magical about black and white photography. Like seeing the world in a completely different way: simple.

Check out some of my favorite black and white photos on Imagekind below.

Spring has officially arrived. And with spring comes the inspiration for change and newness. Now’s the time to freshen up your interior design. It’s not too hard to have a completely new look and feel with just a few framed art pieces. Artwork has the ability to liven up a space to make your home or office feel like a completely new place!

Below are 5 of the top decorating trends for this spring. Find framed artwork that features natural subjects, colorful and patterned prints, along with images that inspire you to refresh and renew, but most importantly, make you feel comfortable.

Nature

Nature and the outdoors are still very popular decorating trends for spring 2009. With the continued emphasis on being green and going organic, you’re sure to see an emphasis on trends surrounding nature. With artwork, this means bringing the outdoors in. Find artwork that focuses on nature: trees, flowers, rural and natural landscapes. All of these make nature and the outdoors the shining star.

Color

Spring brings more daylight and brighter colors. This means color is back and one of the top trends for interior decorating. Designs are sure to feature high levels of color. Bold uses of the primary and other bright colors are sure to make your interior design really stand out. Shop artwork by color; reds, greens, yellows, blues. Look for colors to brighten up your home or office decor.

|| Share this on Twitter | What do you think? Share your thoughts! ||

Patterns

Patterns and symmetry can bring balance to distressful situations. That’s why patterns are making a huge impact on the 2009 interior design trends. With bad news seemingly all around, more and more people are looking for familiarity. And, though it will not cure everything, familiarity can help quell the feelings of anxiety. Find artwork on Imagekind that features pleasant patterns and comforting symmetry.

RE-

2009 is shaping up to truly be the year of RE; refresh, redesign, renew. A hot trend that caught fire throughout 2008, the ideas of RE are staying strong in 2009. Refresh your interior design by starting with the walls. Find framed artwork that opens a new world of possibilities and brings both the freshness and newness of Spring indoors. Rearrange the furniture and accent the room with art that’s sure to refresh your space.

Comfort

With more and more people staying home in an effort to weather the econmic climate, they need an interior decor that’s comftorable. Look for ways to showcase your personality with your art. Framed pictures of family, friends, pets and past vacations are all fantastic ways to make your interior both comftorable and personal. Being surrounded by the things you care about most, really helps to remind us of what is most important in life. Frame your own favorite photos at Imagekind.com/create. Or, print them on canvas!

Share this on Twitter | What do you think? Share your thoughts!

Have you seen the new artwork page on Imagekind?

We’ve just released a newly updated version of the main artwork page that’s sure to make quite an impact on the overall Imagekind experience. Now it is easier, more intuitive and all around quicker to shop for the framed artwork you love!

Just some of the amazing features:

Single click shopping with shorter purchasing path for those who don’t need all the options!
Better product displays that show frame details right on the page!
Browse links to easily see the previous and next artwork in an artist’s gallery!
Choose your product (print, canvas or greeting card) on the same page!
Quicker load time to improve the overall page performance!
Shop similar art by color, genre, tags and more!

Additionally, we have also made changes to include both our satisfaction guarantee as well as easily displaying the savings you’ll receive when shopping at Imagekind.

We are all excited about these recent updates and think the new artwork page shows off Imagekind’s unique offering; being both an active and thriving artist community site, as well as a high end framed art retailer. We’ve essentially split the page down the middle to successfully incorporate both aspects.

We have several more plans for future improvements and features. Imagekind is dedicated to continue innovating the way you shop, sell and create art. You can stay updated on all of Imagekind’s future improvements by subscribing to our RSS feed, and joining the Imagekind newsletter.

Find all of the improvements in our official announcement to our community.

Now, stop reading and go check out the new page and shop for framed art!