J. Perrault: January 2010

Sunday, January 31, 2010

"Chelsey" Portrait offered on Ebay

An original oil painting from our Wednesday model sessions. New paintings listed every Sunday and Wednesday night at 8 PM EST.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Untitled Portrait

An original oil painting from our Wednesday model sessions. New paintings listed every Sunday and Wednesday night at 8 PM EST.

Sold

Etsy Paintings

"Swirl" 20 x 24 inches

Price

"Swirl" - detail

My February copy of American Art Collector Magazine arrived this week. After browsing through it and being distinctly underwhelmed, I shelved it along with all the other 51 editions. That's when I noticed the size of the magazine had decreased by approximately one half. Hmmm... so I'm paying the same amount of money for half the magazine? If it were a box of pasta that means I'd be paying the same price as a year ago, but getting half a box of air. Someone call Consumer Reports!

It's the economy, of course. The bottom has fallen out of the art market. As much as American Art Collector in its pages pretends otherwise, art is a bad business to be in right now. "Somehow it just doesn't seem very urgent to buy that painting for the living room wall. Let's wait, honey."

On Friday I stopped by West End Gallery to drop off a painting. The gallery owner, Lin Gardner, gave me eight paintings back. I'm not sure what the expression on my face was, but after one look Lin hastened to add, "Nobody's selling Jeff. Nothing's moving." Lin was optimistic and upbeat that 2010 would be a much better year. At the time I didn't want to burst her bubble, but I don't know... Nobody's said 'double-dip recession' yet, but with an unemployment index around (or over) 10% you have to wonder.

Apparently brick-and-mortar galleries are closing right, left and sideways. It would be a tremendous loss to the Corning/Elmira community - no to the greater Finger Lakes area - if West End closed its doors. Any community losing a gallery suffers a cultural loss.
Now to the brighter side. As I carted the eight paintings to my car (not all at once) it occured to me this was an opportunity. Last July I heard about a unique site called Etsy. It's sort of like EBay except one can only sell hand-made goods. Art qualifies as handmade so... time to open a store on Etsy.

While it's kinda, sorta like EBay there are differences. For instance they don't have an auction system. The price is set and the buyer and seller come together with payment usually through PayPal. Each seller gets a 'store' and Etsy facilitates by being a middleman. Of course they take their cut too, but it's not a deep one right now.

My Etsy store can be accessed here or you can just search for JPerrault under sellers. The first painting offered is "Swirl". I'll be adding others soon. Hope you can visit!