I would pay you TEN DOLLARS for that right now

"Wow! That is beautiful! I would pay you TEN DOLLARS for that right now!"

These were the words of a close friend in the early 1970s when I showed him a small oil painting I had finished and framed. He loved it, really. And he had no idea of the message he unwittingly sent to this young art MASSART graduate.

Yup, he could have knocked me over with a breath of wind at that moment. But I kept smiling. No, I was neither a moron, nor duplicitous in my friendly response to him. We were both young, and as poor as church mice. Ten dollars was not easy for either of us to find at the time. And I did not let on the fact that ten bucks wouldn't even cover the cost of art materials, much less compensate my long hours of painting.

I could have become mad. But he was actually showing me a buying sign. Yes, he would have paid me $10 right then and their, but I refused to sell.

But he had given me a gift I have benefited from ever since that day. Plenty of people would like to buy my art, but could not budget the money I would need to receive to keep on painting. If I spent 10 hours on a painting, and sold it for $50, my compensation would have been five dollars per hour… IF I made the sale.

The, in the late 1980s I had limited edition lithographs made of 2 paintings. Since then, even now, in 2015, I have sold prints of those 2 paintings, while I busied myself on my jobs in graphic design, and commissions of fine art. Ten dollars is nothing… unless it multiplies itself into a hundred sales at ten dollars a piece: 10 dollars x 100 sales = $1,000, and now my hard work begins to make sense. Of course there's the investment of $5000 investment (risk) up front to print those 2 paintings, which leaves me needing to sell another 400 prints to break even.

Enter the "Giclee" printer

Epson pioneered development of an inkjet printing technology that Could print colorfast pigmented inks onto archival quality papers and canvases. I printed a couple of my watercolors about 15 years ago, and to this day they are identical to the original in every way.

On Demand

And there is no $5000 risk on a limited edition print run. These super quality prints are able to be printed on demand, one at a time.

So now, I can finally follow through and sell my art at a price I can survive, and my friend can purchase it for a price he can afford.

FINE ART AMERICA

But what's the financial risk in purchasing an Epson large format fine art printer? Answer: the short side of $10,000. Oops! Another roadblock to my survival.

And then came Fine Art America, who will carry the cost of purchasing and maintaining the expensive fine art printer, guarantee all their prints, and take care of all the shipping arrangements AND online purchases, allowing me to designate mark-up on each item. The bigger part of the print price is the money the printer takes to stay in business, and my percentage comes to me with no risk.

Problem solved.

LET THE PRINT SALES BEGIN