Friday 29th May

I was sorting through more stuff this week and came across a notebook in which I’d recorded my paintings supplied to Buckinghams between August 2014 and August 2018.  Just for the hell of it I decided to count them. I was flabbergasted to find there were 700!

Bearing in mind I joined Buckinghams in 2012 and I’m still with them albeit, in a reduced capacity, I must have sent them 1000 or more paintings!  That seems a lot of work! Looking through some of the titles it indicated the huge number of styles and subject matter I’ve produced for them.  Also from these records (not including 2012-14 and 2018-26) over 600 had sold! I must be rich! But no, for anyone who knows how the “Fine Art Market “ works or knows me, they will know that not to be true!! (necessary if repeated explanation coming). I also noted, with some amusement, that in 2016 I had 2 paintings stolen by an enterprising, art loving thief who stole a Buckinghams delivery truck whilst it was out delivering to galleries!

The book reminded me why I had recorded all this activity. Due to the rather antiquated system Buckinghams operated with in those days It was getting impossible to keep a track on what was being sold from statements received. At this point I apologise to those of you who’ve heard this before but for those who haven’t or zoned out the first time I will try to explain succinctly how the market worked. 

Deciding to join a Fine Art Publisher is a big decision. It’s also not your choice as you have to be “invited” to join a stable of artists who are prepared to accept the restrictions of working in this market accepting a much lower price for your original work and limitations placed on your style, size and subject matter in exchange for the transporting, framing, marketing and selling of your work through a website and in a nationwide network of galleries and the biggie, quantity of work sold. Fine Art Publishers are all about selling prints not originals. The production of a series of high quality, Giclee Limited Edition prints from an artists original work is where they make their money. The artist receives a small royalty from each print sold plus the money for their original. This was the situation when I joined Washington Green in 2007. Despite the reduction in price for my originals they were requesting enough on a monthly basis for me to make a living wage from it.  This option, at the time, was a safer one than just trying to go it alone through selling through galleries. The same situation applied when I was asked to join Buckinghams in 2012. However, I decided, for various reasons, that I didn’t want to go down the prints route and offered my services on an originals only basis, which, to my surprise, they accepted . Unlike Washington Green, Buckinghams did not have a collection of exclusive Galleries and sold through their network of Independent Galleries who, in order to encourage purchases, were given generous terms with an option to return unsold paintings if they hadn’t sold after 3 months, for a full refund. Although that that worked well for the Galleries and Buckinghams it was a nightmare for the artists who were paid in their monthly statement on selling the painting but if it was returned 3 months later had that amount deducted from their next months statement. With the amount of work I had going out from Buckinghams it became impossible to track what had sold and when. We were never allowed to know which galleries the work went to as Buckinghams were afraid of a direct approach by an artist to cut out the middle man. To complicate matters a returned painting could then be sent to another gallery under the same terms…

For example I could sell 3 paintings one month and be paid £500 and after 3 months they could be returned by the gallery and the £500 would appear as a debit on my monthly statement until cleared by further sales.  I started this little book to try and keep track of all these movements. It was a nightmare and virtually impossible. I could imagine trying to explain it all to a tax inspector!

When the old CEO retired and a new CEO,  Jonathan Kearns, appointed the system finally changed and there were far fewer returns. Buckinghams have also been developing their own collection of Galleries over the last few years. I do occasionally get the odd return but it is very infrequent but I don’t send anything like the amount of work to them.

To add to my flabbergastation, I was also sorting through some old folders containing lots of images taken from a laptop of my paintings dating back to school days. There were hundreds including various exhibitions up to Charisma Gallery and up to Washington Green. I spent most of Tuesday going through them and getting them in some sort of order. My Washington Green paintings are in folders already as are many Buckinghams paintings on my phone and my recent private work is all recorded on my phone and a laptop exterior hard drive but not in physical form including the images for my book. It all adds up to a lot of work.

When I produced a “Gallery Inventory“ recently I had supplied 288 paintings to my galleries in 2025/6 and, of course, there’s the work in my studio and party shed. I have, over the years tried to keep images of the work I’ve produced but quite a bit I suspect has slipped through the net including many small paintings and thousands of hand painted cards. However, it’s sometimes good to look back at previous work no matter how bad it looks now. I’ve always said, to miss quote somebody, that art is a journey not a destination! It’s annoying but understandable that I don’t know where most of the paintings are but that must be the case for every artist. It would be a long but satisfying project to get all my recorded work in one place in some standard format. Who knows when and if that will ever happen. On Wednesday, I started to photograph everything I have here at the moment but quickly gave it up as too arduous a task for now. I also managed 6 small watercolours this week in my creative afternoon on Wednesday. 

As a departing gesture after this long read I’m offering the painting of “Embleton Bay and Dunstanburgh Castle”, 40cmx30cm oil on canvas, unframed, at the head of this blog for a sale price of £30 to the first person who wants it.