Buying Art can stimulate your senses, bring personal and emotional pleasure and even create opportunity for return on your investment!

The spectrum of potential within the process of buying art is wide and varied. Buying art, single originals, giclee’ original limited additions, art prints, fine art, contemporary art, fine art prints, art posters, art photography, and art online offers a host of collectable possibilities.

That is beautiful, I love it, I really love it! “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.” Genesis 3:6 It’s the “WOW” factor and its goes back to the beginning, a delight to the eyes. She didn’t have anyone telling her it was beautiful. She didn’t even ask the audience. She didn’t make any calls or even ask her husband.

Each one of us has the eyes and hearts to experience the “Wow”. The “WOW” that arts your heart! You are the critic, the critiquer and the commentator. When something is a delight to your eyes and you love it, it’s about you, your feelings and your emotions, your relationships, your memories, your laughter, and tears.

Art has traveled an historic road of color, shape, line and appeals to conformity as well as pushing all boundaries. Art has traveled from having a theme and telling a story to giving meaning and passing on understanding. Art has traveled a road of visual tales to reality and the affects of light, shadow and contrast. Art has traveled foreground, background, and perspective. It has elements of form, line, shape, color, texture, space and value. It has principles of emphasis balance, harmony, variety, movement, rhythm, proportion and unity. It has the conceptual, the idea, and the process. It has the struggle between the artistic concept, the idea, and the result of the activity, the work. Art has traveled to closing the lines between “the arts”, drawing, painting, photography, film, the visual; and writing, poetry, song, dance and the performing as well as the media and the medium. Art has expressions of originality, single pieces, reproductions and now new technologies which create a whole new level of original work and forms of expression. Art has traveled and expanded and interacted. Art shows its value and its importance everyday in ways we don’t even comprehend. Art is, “freedom of expression” and often, “the expression of freedom”! Art lives and breathes and makes our lives better.

In buying art or collecting art, there is nothing more important in buying or collecting art than discovering “you”. No matter how much money you have or don’t have; unless you just have someone doing it on speculation and you are not engaged with art at all, there is truly no one who can determine what you like. No one who knows what moves your soul, heart, mind, body and spirit like you. Taking what you’ve set on paper, go to the net, a series of galleries, museums, exhibits, the library or other sources to help you discover art for your heart, emphasis on “your”. Look for the right art work. Match up with those things you find intriguing. Evaluate, write down, and use the evaluation guide. Map out what moves you. Don’t hold back dig and look and look some more. Discern and determine for yourself what you like. Whether you like contemporary, realism, surrealism, calligraphy, woodblock, fresco, seascape, landscape, graphic, abstract, design, color, black and white, painting, drawing, pen and ink, watercolor, palette knife, pastel, photography, sculpture, casting, jewelry, metal work, computer, digital, and so on and so forth; find your soul mate. After finding “how to”, keep refining as you start the process of categorizing. If you find along your way an artist or two that goes about giving and putting themselves into a work or a collection of works and you’ve revealed to yourself that they do really set your heart on fire, email them, talk with them contact and find out more about them. Support them and have them support you.

Photography is art. Once, the only expression of a person was an expression by an artist in a drawing or painting. Then the rules of orchestration were set to include certain items like stories, themes, light, shadow and more. Realism was the only rule. Then it all changed when a mechanical instrument passed light through a lens and photography was birthed. Where photography has replaced certain forms of art in many of its visual values, it has opened many doors to new forms of expression, integration, and pure art. It has opened the door to a host of new artists and expanded the vastness of memorable moments of time and relationships. It is an art unto itself, a “freedom of expression and the expression of freedom”. It is desirable, has the “WOW”, and is collectable.

Here’s what Lisa Kocian says in her article in the Boston Globe on March 19, 2006 titled “ Buying Art As An Investment ”. Remember you don’t have to buy paintings that are outside of your ability. Here’s a list of the most expensive  painting purchased from “Wikipedia”.

Remember, Artists are entitled like any other worker to be paid a fair compensation and have the benefits all others do in our society. Often they fail in dealing not only with their expression but in the means or methods to make a living and exist. Sometimes they produce products of genius, great universal works of harmony. Sometimes they struggle to buy the needs of their next expression. Sometimes they are known, sometimes unknown, sometimes emerging and sometimes have passed away. All of these issues can play into the buying of art.

A great way to put this all together is to view the Independent Lens Special “Herb & Dorothy” a fascinating insightful look into how two wonderful people, a postal worker and librarian, connected with artists, took a part of their income and turned it into a collection worth millions, donated it completely to the National Gallery of Art, and truly accomplished something quite amazing.