Art Interview
Collier & Dobson Ltd Collier & Dobson premises
Cruse Scanner in Action
Duende III by Tabitha Salmon
it doesn’t fi t into our portfolio. However, if the work isn’t up to scratch I will tell the artist. I will also give them advice from my point of view, I’m not saying I’m the Holy Grail and have all the answers but I have an opinion, in fact we all have an opinion. We’re in the publishing business, the retail business and the artist has to take that on board.
“I’ll always look at anything, although I know pretty instantly whether it’s for us or not. Trying to force yourself to like something doesn’t necessarily help the artist or us. The work has to grab you in a commercial way and
which were sent to each individual partner around the world and that business came from word of mouth. “We also print and frame all Jack Vettriano’s works for his Heartbreak Company although we don’t sell his work and again this came via recommendation.” How do you go about fi nding new artists or do a number of them fi nd you? Philip answered thus: “We have grown a lot and we do have a good portfolio of artists and that’s getting stronger with the help of Giles Halliwell [sales manager], he has a very good focus on the trade, we’re both out there fi nding new artists and bringing them to market.
“That said we do have artists coming to us, phoning up or emailing on a daily basis. I would say that we turn down 95%, perhaps more! It doesn’t necessarily mean there’s anything wrong with the art, but rather
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I’m happy to say that. People look on commercial as being a ‘dirty word’, but it’s not. Commercial means it sells! The masses like it. I look on commercial in a positive way, although all our prints are limited editions.”
He added: “I don’t believe in contracts, my relationship with my artists is based on trust and once that trust is broken, the relationship is not one that I want to be with. The art business is a very personal business and I say to my artists, ‘if you’ve got a problem come and see me’ and we’ll try and sort it out. If we can’t sort it out then we’ll walk away hopefully as friends. I don’t believe in restricting an artist, if they choose to go down a different route we’ll wish them well and go our separate ways.” He added the following rider: “Artists by nature often think it’s greener on the other side. Sometimes
they have to go away to fi nd out that actually ‘what they had’ was better than they thought although I have to say we don’t lose many artists. I’m not a believer in telling artists what to paint. They would quickly become bored and somewhat begrudging of it. They need to enjoy what they are doing. Often it’s more a touch of mentoring that is needed!” It seems to me, as editor of Picture Business, that a number of artists who try ‘self-publishing’ may be very good artists but are not necessarily good when it comes to the business end of their operation. Have you a view on this?
Philip again: “I think that manufacturers have basically pushed everyone to be a printer and what they don’t appreciate is that there’s the promotion, the packing, the distribution, the accounting, the chasing for money and all the other bits that come with a cost. They’ve been sold the kit, they’ve been sold the dream and you’ll fi nd they’re spending all their time on ‘Photoshop’ and they don’t have time to paint. I think a lot of artists are beginning to realise why publishers are there and things will be going full circle before too long, if not already! “There’s a reason why publishers and agents are there and that’s because they do a job and understand the market. There’s very little risk to the artist in terms of cost because the publisher takes all that risk. The artist has to create the work and the rest is down to the publisher or agent to take that work from a beautiful picture to something that becomes accessible to the marketplace and what a lot of artists don’t understand is how expensive that is.”
When it comes to delivery of goods to customers Philip readily admits that it too can be a costly business.
He said: “We’re selling a lot more framed prints nowadays, particularly to our lifestyle customers and have found that no matter how we work it, delivery costs amount to 15% of the [framed] sales trade value to ship. That’s if you want the goods to get there in one piece. We’re actually sharing that cost with our
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