Painters' Art Sale - an online exhibition by the Painters' Company Charities

The Painters Art Sale is a NEW Online Exhibition by the Painters' Company Charities - the charitable arm of The Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers.

Overview of Painters Art Sale (Online)

View of the website - which hurts my eyes.

• All sales proceeds support the artist and the arts educational programme at Painters' Company Charities
• All works in the online exhibition are priced at £300 or less.  

The price you pay for a single work is the same price that applies to every other work in the Painters’ Art Sale, which is £300. We are a separately registered subsidiary charity of the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers and we are not registered at this time for VAT. As a result, there is no VAT in the price you pay and no VAT invoice will be raised.

• there are four categories:
• New Abstract (24 items)
• The Figure (61 items)
• Contemporary Views (80 items)
• Other Themes (56 items)
• The online exhibition opened on 7 September 2020 and lasts until to 31 December 2020.
• you can still enter works. I'm assuming this means artwork is removed as it is sold and new works are added as they are accepted into the exhibition. 

Below I comment on the four categories and the entry process and highlight a few of the images in the exhibition.

There is some good artwork in the exhibition - but you do have to wade through quite a lot of mediocre art and some is just plain bad.  Obviously I highlight the artwork I like or think is effective as opposed to that which I think fails to 'make a mark'!

Categories of Works in the Exhibition

Note that you can sort each category according to the surname of the artist (A to Z and Z to A), by price - except they are all the same i.e. £300 - and by which are the newest.

Interestingly I found some of the artwork listed elsewhere online for bigger sums!

Issue re how work is exhibited online

The main problem with the way the artwork is exhibited is there is no horizontal slideshow with an arrow command on the right - so you can click or swipe quickly through the dross to get to the ones worth lingering over.

The problem of a website format with precisely the same predetermined box for every artwork is that none of them look good. Plus you have to click each one to see it properly. After you've done this a few times you move on to the next thing you had planned for your day and leave the site.

Here's an example - Westminster Abbey by Chris Francis - an accomplished painting using mixed media - with a slice out of its middle for the online gallery of all contemporary views

Westminster Abbey by Chris Francis

compared to the view in the 'gallery view'

If people are going to create online exhibitions like this then they really NEED TO GET TO GRIPS WITH HOW PEOPLE WANT TO VIEW ARTWORK QUICKLY AND EASILY!!!!

I'm saying this here as I know most people won't spend a lot of time on the website in its current format - but that doesn't mean to say it can't be fixed!

New Abstract

The two charcoal drawings by Emma Davis are impressive - and I think this is maybe the Emma David who was selected for last year's LPS exhibition. 

I'm not that taken with most of the rest and the names are unfamiliar to me.

The Figure

Some names I recognise. Some artwork I like - for example 

• Dorothy by Austen Pinkerton - characterises for me good artwork at this price level e.g. good draughtsmanship and demonstrable skills in use of colour
• The Mothers by Christine Gallagher - mixed media involving collage - looks fresh and old at the same time

However this category is the one where I start to wonder if people understand how best to approach selling art for £300. 

Contemporary Views

This looks more promising - on the whole the talent and the skills are more demonstrable in this category. 

Plus I'm more liable to forgive "relaxed approaches" to draughtsmanship much more landscapes than I do for the figure. 

A number look like studies for larger / more evolved paintings - and that's to be expected for this level of price where the artist is well known (and I know some of the names and who they are)

• Outside Southgate Tube Station - Jeanette Barnes - total bargain - Jeanette had had work hung in a number of prestigious exhibitions and she has taught drawing for taught drawing for many years for the Royal Academy of Arts Outreach programme and the Royal Drawing School . Very characteristic of her work but Jeanette usually sells for a lot more than this!
• View from Lloyds Register by David Piddock - another impressive monochrome study by a successful artist
• Westminster Abbey by Chris Francis - see above

Some artists have intelligently included two works which work well together. See works below by David Gould and Keith Robinson

Other Themes

"Other themes" include: flowers, fruit, animals and a miscellany of other natural objects plus drawings and paintings lying around in the studio.......

Not a lot made me want to click the image.

Ones which struck me were 

• two works by Philippa Schofield (pity they weren't listed together)
• Liberty by Austen Pinkerton - who seems to be an illustrator who very clearly knows what he's doing in terms of both composition, draughtsmanship and use of colour and media. Pity the website of this Welsh artist is offline. 

If you want to submit an artwork

• This is the Entry Form 
• You can enter up to two works
• Eligible media is oil, acrylic, tempera, watercolour, ink, vinyl and dry media
• Entrants are encouraged to make new work (although it's very clear to me many haven't)
• There is no charge or registration fee for the exhibition
• Every artwork is sold for a £300 fixed price
• £100 will be deducted from every sale as a contribution to the Painters Arts Charities. (i.e. equates to 33% commission PLUS you get to pay for delivery - see below)
• These are the terms of business in relation to sale of the artwork. 
• A third-party payment provider PayPal is being used for all transactions.
• This is the bit artists need to pay attention to (you will get £5 to cover the cost of delivery)

Delivery of Works
12. The artist is responsible for delivery of your purchased work(s). On receipt of your payment, the artist is provided with your contact details (name, address, email address and telephone) to affect the work’s delivery. We do not deliver any works purchased from the site.

13. Artists will package your purchased work(s) securely, providing suitable protection to the work’s surface. Artists are required to dispatch sold works to the purchaser within seven days of the date of sale. We will not be liable for any damage, delay or loss to works while in transit.

So basically if I were entering and I was thinking about the scope for a decent return for my time and effort, I'd

• submit a work on paper - lighter and cheaper to deliver
• unframed - much easier and cheaper to deliver
• select a work which fits well with the 4x3 image slice on the website i.e. show the whole artwork not just a bit of it - makes it more likely to sell!
• make sure it's completely dry and/or fixed so it doesn't fix and/or cause other smudging problems during transit

and finally......

I'd be interested to hear your comments on this new approach by the Painter-Stainers Company to raise charitable funds - comments to my Facebook page please.

PS> This took a little longer than usual I discovered a blog which was wholesale plagiarising my blog partway through and have taken time out to report it via a DCMA Notice to Google!