Fridge Magnet Art

This is what the bottom half of my (eyelevel) fridge door looks like - decorated with fridge magnets from various top art galleries and museums.

My Fridge Magnets

There's something of a colour theme coming through - and also an indication of which artists I like. There are more artists I like but who are not as yet represented and that's only because I haven't got hold of any of their fridge art as yet!

This is a collection from art galleries and museums and exhibitions in:

• London: National Gallery and Tate Britain
• Paris: the Orangerie, Louvre, Musee d'Orsay, Musée Marmottan Monet and Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais 

Most of the ones you see for purchase online are rather lurid all the way through to totally OTT! I much prefer to get mine from the museums.

Do you recognise any of them?

What does your fridge door artwork look like? (Feel free to drop a link to your fridge art below or in the thread I'm starting on my Facebook Page)

Link: Top 10 Art Galleries and Museums in the World - I'll be updating this in the near future.

Why social media matters in 2014

Ever wondered whether you ought to be doing more on social media - but didn't know where or how to apply your efforts?

Watching this video about the 10 social media facts and statistics in 2014 will help you decide. It's focused on the USA however the majority of the themes will travel - such as the very heavy gender bias on Pinterest.

You will find your jaw drops when you read some of the statistics!  You may also be surprised by the coverage of sites you've never heard of.

It is worth trying to keep up with how countries vary if you're focusing on targeting your artwork on a specific country

For example a recent report by Neilsen suggests that 80% of UK users access Twitter via their mobile

Read 
UK Twitter users are more mobile and 
80% of UK users access Twitter via their mobile

Art Marketing on social media

My take on all of this is that:

• if you are aiming to sell artwork to people under the age of 45 you have got to be social media savvy 
• PLUS your websites and blogs need to be accessible via mobile devices

If you're targeting the older art collector who likes visiting art galleries then it's probably less important to be conversant with social media - for now.

Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision at the NPG (July-October 2014)

This summer, Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision will be on display from 10 July until 26 October at the National Portrait Gallery.

The exhibition will take the form of a visual biography through portraiture and will be devoted to the life and achievements of Virginia Woolf, the celebrated writer and literary figure.

The display will include over 100 paintings, drawings and photographs and rare archival material, including a letter to her sister, Vanessa Bell, written shortly before her suicide.

The exhibition page on the NPG website

Woolf was a member of the Bloomsbury group and was painted by more than one of its members.

In 1905, Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell began to host weekly gatherings held at 46 Gordon Square, which led to the development of the Bloomsbury group of writers, artists and intellectuals, of which the sisters were central figures. The group included notable names such as John Maynard Keynes, Roger Fry and Lytton Strachey. In 1912, Woolf married Leonard Woolf and together founded publishing company the Hogarth Press in 1917.

In 1910 and 1912 Roger Fry brought French Post-impressionism to London and introduced England to modern art. From then on Woolf’s development as a modernist writer was to an extent influenced by her thinking about painting.

The portraits in the exhibition will include ones by Roger Fry, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell

T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf
by Lady Ottoline Morrell, June 1924
© National Portrait Gallery, London;

Highlights of the exhibition include distinctive portraits of Woolf by her Bloomsbury Group contemporaries, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry, as well as a collection of photographs by Beresford, Man Ray, and Beck and McGregor who photographed Woolf for Vogue. The exhibition will also feature portraits of those she was closest to, including a selection of intimate images recording her time spent with friends, family and literary peers.

The exhibition follows on from previous National Portrait Gallery literary exhibitions that have combined portraiture with biography, including the presentation of the Sitwell family in 1994 and the examination of Lord Byron in 2002.

These are the details of:

• information for visitors
• how to book tickets
• the biography written in association with the exhibition - which can be ordered online

10 top tips for art blogs

I've just been providing advice to a rather prominent blog about something they hadn't implemented on Blogger which makes a great deal of difference to how Google ranks your blog posts.

Click links and this is what you see
If you want to change the suggested URL link
click "custom permalink"

So I thought I'd review what I'd written previously and that's how I ended up with this top ten list of things you can do to improve your art blog using Blogger.  They're in order of publication starting with the most recent

10 top tips for art blogs 

#1.  Techie: How to create a customised URL for your Blogger blog post 21 Jul 2012 - Have you ever been irritated by the URL that Blogger has assigned to your Blogger blog post with the clever title? Did you know it is now possible for YOU to determine and customise the URLs which act as permalinks for your blog post.

#2  How to create a 'search description' for your Blogger post 14 May 2012 - How to create individual summaries for a 'search description' for a Blogger blog post - and why this is worthwhile.< #3  Pinterest: How to prevent your Blogger images from being pinned 24 Feb 2012 - This post explains how to stop images on your Blogger blog from being pinned to a Pinterest site - by inserting a meta tag in your Blogger template.

#4  Techie: How NOT to lose all your Blogger Pics! 23 Jul 2011 - First, this is a salutary tale of how to avoid losing all your pics from your blog(s) when moving to Google +. Second, it highlights how to keep your images private in Picasa and how to avoid people downloading your images from Picasa web albums and making prints of your artwork.

You only see the "Search description"
box if you've added a meta description
to your Blogger blog

#5  Assess how your website or blog ranks for quality in Google 09 May 2011 - This includes the questions which Google suggests you should address if you want to protect or improve the way your website or blog ranks in Google.

#6  How to make Blogger pages work for you 08 Feb 2010 - This post explains what you need to do to create Blogger Pages and how to make the new Blogger Pages function relevant to artists.

#7  5 approaches to avoid on your art website or art blog - Making a Mark 21 May 2009 - It's very difficult to get everything right in terms of an art website or blog. However, it's a lot easier to avoid doing things which are going to have a bad impact on your art website or art blog.

#8  NEW - Automatic publication of future-dated Blogger posts 16 May 2008 - Includes some tips for people wanting to use this new function in Blogger to schedule posts for publication in the future.

#9  Why it's a good idea to use labels in Blogger 01 Sep 2007 - the aim of this post is to help people to understand better:

• why using labels is a good idea
• how to choose labels to use
• some things to think about before using Labels in Blogger

#10  How to improve your art blog 04 Sep 2007 - I stopped my first blog after six posts and started again. What does the name and description of your blog say about you, your purpose, your interests and your art?

How to design a stand for an art fair

How would you go about designing a stand for an art fair?
If you're not sure where you'd start I suggest you read Lisa Call's blog post The Value of Questions – aka Smithsonian Prep on her blog Lisa Call - Textile Paintings.

Lisa decided the best approach this year was to make a scale model of the stand and all the artwork so she knew what was going where and shipped the right artwork to the fair.  So that's what she did!  (The photo at the end is quite scary and shows even the best laid plans can have interlopers!)

Other blog posts and websites which are helpful on this topic include:

• 10 Ways to Make Your Booth Trade Show Ready on Arts Business Institute
• AN ART FAIR PRIMER with Ilana Vardy on Artbusiness.com
• Selling Art: Tips From An Art Fair Veteran by Mona Majorowicz who has been selling professionally for 20 years. She has a very specific set of dos and don'ts. Mona also has separate websites about 
• Art Fairs | Art Festivals | Artist Display Lighting; 
• Art Fair Tents & Canopies and 
• Artwork Display Panels

Sarah Wimperis at the
Watercolours and works on paper art fair 2012

A veteran of many art fairs is my friend Sarah Wimperis  (The Red Shoes) who represents the Beside the Wave Gallery at art fairs around the UK and who can tell you a thing or two about what to do and what not do at art fairs!

This is a heavy hint that a blog post sharing a few tips would be good! :)