Please come to the Exhibition to view and enjoy all the art work on display, it will be a pleasure to meet you!

Another painting from my collection of photos from the early 60's, when you could still find rustic villages all along the coast of Greece.  This is a fishing village called 'Soutrali' (hope it still has the same name as it has been converted into a nudist camp since then!)  Just behind those trees was a tavern and a small Inn.  My dad's favorite fishing place!  
The painting s created on canvas and has been framed.  It is going to be exhibited at the "Hellenic Art's 2012" exhibition together with other of my original art work.

This painting is inspired from an old (1960) photo of a doorway of a stone house in a village in Greece.  The chair is very traditional to village life.
Created on canvas size 50x60cm and has been framed.  The painting will be exhibited in the "Hellenic Arts 2012" exhibition.  More info to follow.

New painting from my series "City Life"

The latest in my series "City Life" with a spiritual message.  Name: Spirit of the City - size 102 x70cm.

New Paintings

These two paintings are specially done for a Spring exhibitions more details to follow soon.

My latest painting from my series "City Life- City Trees"
Inspired by the bare trees in my garden during the cold Winter months. 
The size of this painting is 76x102cm on gallery stretch canvas can be framed or hang as is.

The five elements of the Universe represent the five different ways in how the chi energy is manifested.
Wood burns to give us Fire the ash becomes Earth where we extract the Metal (gold, silver, copper etc.) which liquefies and symbolically flows like Water which nurtures the soil and creates Wood.
So the circle of energy goes round.  Each of the five elements is represented by it’s own shape and color and also represent different seasons of the year.
Metal is – white/silver/gold - Autumn.  Water is – black/blue – Winter.  Earth is – yellow/brown – Indian Summer.  Fire is – red – Summer.  Wood is – green – spring. 
Collection Mr. & Mrs. Kostoglou.

The five elements of the Universe represent the five different ways in how the chi energy is manifested.
Wood burns to give us Fire the ash becomes Earth where we extract the Metal (gold, silver, copper etc.) which liquefies and symbolically flows like Water which nurtures the soil and creates Wood.
So the circle of energy goes round. Each of the five elements, is represented by its own shape and color.
In the painting I applied  ‘artistic license’ to better the composition of shape and color starting with Metal -Water-Earth-Fire and Wood.

Another colorful painting size 61x76cms on stretched canvas.  This painting will be exhibited at Emperor's Palace 'Art and Craft Expo'  end of June. More details will follow soon.

Sundown on the farm

A new painting a new style! inspired from the bright and colorful paintings of Cornelius Bosch.

 

Size of painting 76x76cms on gallery stretched canvas ready to hang.

Art quotation

The way to push painting to a different deeper level is abstraction.  The abstraction is not an alternative to --but a path towards, reality's core......author unkown
Love this quote!

New Painting, "Red Red Poppies"

As much as I love creating abstract work I love painting colorful Poppies too.
This is a canvas 51x76cms in size and created with the use of a palette knife and thick primary colors straight out of the tube!

Tool #4 - Apply the 5 P’s of basic marketing principals

Product – Price – Place – Promotion – PeopleThat is to say that you have the right product at the right price in the right place with the right type of promotion (advertising) and sell it to the right people. This is also known as the marketing mix.
So if you get the right mix of the 5 P’s you should succeed in selling your product. Getting the mix right is the hardest part.

1. The product is the artwork that people would like to buy.
This can be determined through market research and by asking galleries what their customers are looking for, what is selling the most, etc. Landscapes, floral or figures it does not mean that you are painting to please the public it means you paint in order to sell more paintings. You are not compromising your art because you still paint in your own style and your own subjects with your own color palette but more of what is easily sellable! Figures are now the in thing, all artists love painting the figure, I don’t think anyone here does not like to paint figures, even if we are not very good at it, we will try many times over to get it right. We all paint landscapes, we all paint flowers and still life artworks. The only subject that not all artist can paint is…wild-life. Very few artist can get it right. I truly hate it when artists paint lions that are looking like pussycats. It is my opinion that wild life should be painted as wild and dangerous! We can debate this another time.
2. The price
When a client call you to come and see your new paintings and you say sorry, I don’t have anything at the moment, forget it his going elsewhere.We will get back to pricing in a second.
3. The place
You must be prepared to spend a lot of time on your computer investigating your options and what is best for you. Another point to keep in mind for Internet sales is you have to be active and check your inbox regularly, not the next day – not every two days but all the time. People who use the Internet to buy art will not wait for you to make up your mind to check if there is anything happening, they want action there and then. I have lost sales in the past, when I was on dial up connection (I don’t think they still exist) and was checking my inbox 3 times a day, buyers moved on to other artists. Now with ADSL been cheaper the computer is on from 7am to mid-night. Trust me it gets very busy after 11pm. The best sales happen late at night! It is a bit stressful when you deal with different time zones, you have to apologize and explain to the client the time difference in almost every e-mail! It is easier now with the ‘smart phones’ your e-mails come through to your phone wherever you are and if it is urgent you can take action, if not you can do something about it when you get to your home computer. Life is getting very demanding, it’s called progress….we are on duty 24/7!
4. The promotion -
You can advertise in your local newspaper or in an Art magazine, if you have the budget for it. You should advertise your name (every chance you get) more than your art so that people get familiar with you. If they recognize your name they assume you are a well-known artist and pay more attention to your work when they see it.
5. And the last P is the People
, This would be your target market, which you need to segment in order to better understand the type of collectors they are, also this will help you to identify the most effective way to reach these collectors.If you use the wrong promotion, nobody knows about your product or where to find it. If you place your art in the wrong places how can art lovers or collectors find it? You have to choose promotion carefully. Print some nice brochures and give out as many as you can in exhibitions and big events. Also your business card, give them out freely. You can do an e-mail to all your contacts every six months, promoting your new paintings. Try and get gallery e-mail addresses and add them to your e-mailing list.is the Galleries, the Internet and Art Fairs and organized Art exhibitions. The more on line Galleries you enter your work the better your chances to get more exposure to your name and your Art. There are countless on-line Galleries some are free others you subscribe others you pay a fee when you sell an art-work. The more the better all you have to do is ‘Google’ the country you would like to enter your work and take it from there.needs a lot of thinking and planning. If you set your price too high there will be lower demand so you could be left with lots of unsold paintings. If you set it too low there will be lots of demand and you will be left with no paintings (assuming that you are selling at a profit). In this case you could leave customers disappointed because you have nothing to show, so they will go elsewhere and you lose the customer.

For example, if you feel one segment of your target market (your clients) is wealthy executives, you could advertise in the Financial Mail or another business publication. If one segment of your clients like abstract art work don’t send them e-mails about your new landscape paintings and the same goes for the clients who like traditional or paintings that they can identify the subject, don’t sent them pictures of your abstract work.
You can see, getting the right mix is very important for increasing your sales and profits. Again, may I remind you we are talking about the prolific painter who needs to make a living out of his/her art.
Getting back to the pricing of your work
Pricing your art -work is the difficult one! A good starting point is, to know exactly what the total cost of a painting is: the materials you used, the time it took you to paint it and any other expenses that you will have, like packaging, shipping etc.
Once you have the total cost, you can add an acceptable profit and this can be your initial price.
The next step is to see what the other artists are selling their work for. If another artist with similar style (that he is not more or less famous than you) is selling much higher or lower than you, you can decide if you need to adjust your price accordingly. It is always easier to adjust your price higher if you feel you can achieve this, but be careful not to overdo it as the artist you use as a benchmark may not be selling anything.
The best you can do is to look for many others that you can compare with and take the average price as a base for your own prices.
Be reasonably consistent in your pricing. By this I mean you don’t want to sell a painting to one person for R500 and another similar one to someone else for R5000. People buy art for pleasure but it also has the element of investment. The person paying the higher price will want to know his painting will remain or increase in value so if he sees another one going for much less he will assume you are opportunistic and never buy form you again. Always try and exhibit your best work, the rest should be destroyed or reworked until they are good to sell.
If you need to get rid of overstock paintings that just accumulate in your studio you can do a big ‘studio’ sale of 50% off on everything once every couple of years for the duration of a month. Advertise the sale by e-mail to all your clients and this is where you need to have a comprehensive list of clients,
categorized by town or state/province and invite them to view all the art on sale.
You can include a few images of the discounted paintings for the benefit of the clients that are from further away. Also make sure refreshments will be available, the longer they linger in your studio the better the chance they will buy a painting or two.
Especially your clients that will do a bit of traveling will not go back empty handed.
It is very acceptable now days for artists to do this. A lot of collectors wait for an opportunity to buy at a discounted price once in a while.
Everybody loves a good bargain!
There are a lot of things you can do to encourage more sales.
There are many books for marketing in general. The principles are the same for every product..

Parts from my 'talk' on selling your Art

There are ---- different types of artists
Starting from the beginner, fun- hobbyist artist, painting with friends or a person who likes to create things.
Then you have the ‘club’ artist, who paints for a couple of exhibitions a year provided that he/she gets accepted to exhibit. Usually these artists are very good at what they do. But they lack commercial exposure.
We also have the artists who become teachers, whom without them none of us could become ‘artists’. I have great respect for the artist teachers. I for one cannot teach, you need to have a special gift to be able to do this for a living.
Teaching art and demonstrating your technique are two different things.
A very good subject for debating this point but we are not going to do this today.
Then there is the prolific artist who needs to sell direct to the public or through a dealer/agent and be able to make a living out of his/her art.
And finally we have the artists who made a name for themselves and have ‘arrived’ in the art world. We are going to leave these artists alone for now. This category of artists is for another day too.
We all have to start form somewhere.
Today I will concentrate on the prolific artist. A lot of artists say that selling their art is the hardest thing to do.
Art is a luxury item many people cannot afford but when someone finds an artwork that speaks to him/her they will find a way to acquire it.
At the end of 2011, I took stock of my paintings, (I do this every year) I had 34 paintings left in my studio and as always I had 3 on the go. I created 78 paintings of various sizes last year and I sold 90 paintings of various sizes since last January of which 76 were from 1011 the rest where paintings done in previous years.
Usually I paint a lot more but I was fortunate enough to have been commissioned to paint 8 very big paintings last year which took a lot of my time.
Every year I have some paintings left over that I will sell at a later date and I think, the oldest paintings I have are two from 2007. This is how it goes always have a few paintings that just don’t sell, they always come back in the studio.
I will tell you later on how to solve this overstock of paintings.
Today I will give you a few pointers on how you can get started in selling more art by marketing yourself better.
Marketing tools for selling your art directly to the public.
The most important point to remember is to be professional on how you conduct your sales. Start off on the right foot! From the first word of ‘hello’ you start interacting with the viewer of your work, this moment is the most critical, make sure you project the right attitude to impress your potential client be confident and friendly. Avoid engaging in conversation that will draw the clients’ attention and interest away from the objective of buying your painting!
The same applies to Art fairs, exhibitions and galleries.
And treat your art as a business.Tool #1) Be organized and ready for sales.Always include your business card and a brochure or even a simple pamphlet, with your sales.
Your card or brochure should have maximum information of what your art is all about and show or inform the client what your style is.
Also if you undertake commissions.
It is very important to let people know exactly what you can do. Have space for extra information or notes.
And better yet have a notebook at the ready to write down extra information for the interested viewer, like your address for a visit to your studio, or a visit to show some of your art at a more convenient time.
The viewers address for you to take your work to his/her house in order to suggest the right painting for their wall space. This is a winner every time!
You have to be more flexible in order to get more sales.
You need to do a lot of traveling, make it easy for your client to acquire the art work, make them feel as special as the art work they will buy from you.
Have an invoice book with maximum info at the top, your name and telephone numbers or have a printed label stack at the back of the artwork with your details.
Name - telephone & mobile – e-mail address and web site address if you have one.
The same info of the client should be on the invoice too.
Your invoice should have detailed information about the artwork: medium, size and description or catalog number if you have a catalog of your work, it will serve as providence for the painting. So when we are dead and famous our kids can cash in the big money!!
Also it is very important to bubble wrap the sold painting or if it is a small one put in a bag too. It is a small thing to do but it has a very big impact on the buyer. It demonstrates that the artwork is precious and should be treated with great care.
It will make them proud to have a painting of yours and they will show it off at every opportunity to their friends and also they will make a note of mentioning your name, parts of your CV and achievements.
What better advertising than this do you need!
Tool #2) Understand your collectors needs.They will come back and buy more paintings and possibly will become collectors of your work. Explain your work but let the client find his/her connection to the art, don’t spoil it for them, if the client starts telling you what he sees or feels about the artwork let them talk. This is a very important point to keep in mind. Some artists are too quick to correct the viewer resulting in embarrassing the potential buyer and loose a good sale. By letting them talk you get to understand what he/she likes in a painting and you can sagest more art works in the future.
Usually a collector will buy at least 4-5 paintings from the same artist before they move on to another artist. So make sure you give them the best service and the best price you can.
Learn to bargain without offending the client or degrading the value of your art.
Try to persuade undecided viewers into buying the painting they like.
Example: Say the art work price is R2000 and you had it at home for a number of months maybe a year, It is an indication that it is a difficult subject or composition to sell. Or maybe it is the color palette that was used. In front of you now you have an interested buyer that loves the painting but the price is beyond what he had in mind or can afford.
Make it possible to come to an agreement that will benefit both you and the buyer.
Offer a discount of 15% that will drop the price to R1700. Already a number that looks good on the calculator or on paper R300 is a considerable mount of money. If the buyer is still uncomfortable with the new price ask him/her what price they have in mind, they might tell you half the asking price, Be nice about it and tell them the most you can do for them is another R200. That is a discount of 25%. Don’t see it as a loss on your part. It is a sale and at a good price for the client and for yourself. You selling a painting you had for a long time and the buyer will consider the discount more favorably.
For your newer paintings and specially ones that are real master pieces (you will know that from the respond you will have from others) I suggest you start with a 15% discount (for difficult customers) and take it down to 20% is you really have to get the sale. You must always build in the first 15% into the price of your paintings, you either give the 15% discount to the customer or gain 15% extra on the sale. Everybody wins and your buyer is happy.
　
Tool #3 - Get yourself into a selling mode in order to realize your goals.Get out there and sell your art and mostly your name, it is more important to sell your name first, the art will follow!
How many times you have seen an artwork in a gallery or exhibition and say to yourself….this is terrible….not the best for the caliber of this well known artist. And the price is exorbitant just because he/she is a well-known artist!
Collectors will not buy from a totally unknown artist, they buy for investment purposes, unless it is a young up-coming university graduate and they take a chance on the said artist.
On the other hand if your name is very well advertised in all the right places it will ring a bell.
Go to galleries maybe they will not give you a second look at first, eventually they will look!
I had many people telling me they heard of me in Port Elizabeth or they have seen a painting of mine in a gallery window in Cape Town or so & so has a painting of yours in their home and want to acquire a painting themselves or they commission me to do a painting for them. And these people come to me without having set eyes on me before, but they all happen to see my name or heard of me by chance. Word of mouth is also the strongest advertisement tool you can have.
In the new Internet era we are living, the best ‘word of mouth’ advertisement you can have is ‘social media’ blocking, tweeting, fb and others.
Now days all collectors have to do is ‘Google’ my name and find my contact details and contact me.
This is where a web site comes in handy,
I get over 1000 hits a month on my web site. I had many commissions and numerous inquiries about paintings through my web site.
It pays to have a web site only if you are a prolific painter. If you paint for fun and hardly do 10 paintings a year don’t go to the expense of creating one unless you have the knowledge to create one for yourself by yourself.
Another cost is the hosting monthly or yearly fee and updates.
It all depends if you manage it yourself or it is managed by the hosting company. Unfortunately here in South Africa the costs are still very high.

Tool #4 - Apply the 5 P’s of basic marketing principals>>>the rest to follow<<<.

Art Quotations

Art depends upon men dedicated to Nature!  As art then needed nature for its development, Nature now needs art to help it survive.

by Francis Bacon - artist and philosopher

Talk on selling Art

My talk on selling Art directly to the public is comming along.
I have enough information for half an hour. I need to expand on some particular points like pricing your art accourding to  S.A.'s collectors buying power and exhibiting the art in the right places.  Two out of the 5 P's of marketing principals.

My Art statement

Artist Statement
Although I paint a lot of contemporary and abstract subjects, I try to keep the same style and technique for most of my oil paintings.
Every now and then, I like to paint a landscape. It feels like feeding my soul!
I get moved by the beauty of the country around me, the Wonder of the mountains and the expanse of the ocean.
Painting the landscape, after working with more abstract subjects, still life and figurative art, is making me realize my creative diversity.
I study the part of the country I would like to paint and take notes of the colors, the light and the shade formations, I put them all down on my sketch book and I supplement the information with lots of pictures taken vertically and horizontally at different times of the day. I don’t use a good camera, because I don’t want to include too many details when I start painting. I only want the shapes recorded so that I get some accuracy of the place.
Also when working from photos, one can get distracted by the ‘Kodachrom’ of the prints. When you look and study nature, the sky is full of delicate colors, the shadows are blue, purple and pink and the greens are just popping out of the ground. The atmosphere too will determine the palette I’m going to use when I start painting back in my studio.
Color harmony is very important in nature, I note the way a particular scene makes me feel, then I try to recreate this feeling in my work and because I feel so relaxed and one with the Universe my paintings are a reflection of this. Fresh, vivid and happy colors in harmony with each other!
On the other hand, when I paint in my studio, a still life or a contemporary study, I have to create the atmosphere. I have to get the composition right, think about the flowers or ornaments I will use, the colors, the light, which many times is the opposite from what I get naturally from my windows, because the shadows are more favorable for my composition. Then I have to use artificial lights and give the painting the feel of natural sunlight.
　Mary Papas (c) 2008/Privacy policy