Collecting Art can open your eyes to a “priceless” journey!

From collecting art prints to collecting contemporary art, art collecting can vary totally by individual, budget, taste, style and chemistry. The opportunities are endless and the possibilities are exciting. All you need to do is find what you love and obtain it!

Remember, just like in buying art, in collecting art, there is nothing more important in buying or collecting art than discovering “you”.

Art is not a consumer product or a commodity. It’s not on the stock market. There is no license, no standard, no degree. Anyone can be a dealer, a broker, a photographer, and an artist. Anyone can be a collector, an owner, or a critic. There is no price value relationship; except what the marketplace has set and that may have been interpreted by individuals who have an extreme self interest and an interest in pure monetary gain. It can also be driven by those employed in the market that’s been created by need of euphoria values. There is no workshop or function that society dictates no model or no manifesto.

From collecting art prints to collecting contemporary art,

The more we realize we are the ones who dictate our own likes and dislikes, the more we will enjoy, what we enjoy. In others words, it’s “art for art’s sake”.

Collecting art is a contribution to life. It gives us food for our souls, meets and matches and even exceeds our expectations. It lives daily to enhance our lives, beautify our surroundings and give us a resting place in our most demanding environments. It gives us pause and causes us to remember. It reminds us, moves us and treats us as the most valuable of relationships. It is obtainable by all. It is singular and multifaceted beyond comprehension. It can be one piece or fill a museum. It can be horded and private. It can be shared and given. Children express themselves and mothers put there works on refrigerators. Dad’s take their kid’s work to their offices. Doctors have the children’s expressions on the visiting rooms. Children present their visual language as gifts from the heart. Men send a piece of themselves and expressions of love end up on women’s fingers. Women send cards that they cry over before they apply postage or have written a single word. Emails contain funny photos, fantastic glimpses of our universe and outer space, visual of future homes and potential decors and a myriad of art expressions that are too vast to categorize. Computers, phones, Ipods and technology spins with art and the possibilities of buying and collecting as well as transforming our days from days gone by.  

Live it, breath it, do it! Look at your walls, your present surroundings, your environments. Look in a mirror. How do you want to be more positive? How do you want to enhance and enrich your existence? How do you want to be supported? How do you want to be reminded? How do you want to remember? How do you want to live and breathe and see and do? Life is better through art. So, no matter where you are in your buying art, having a collection of one or many, go and obtain art-for-your-heart! Re-evaluate, renew, re-express, re- ignite your life – buy art, collect art and live art.

In collecting art your knowledge base will enhance your abilities to see and find what you personally like and dislike. It will help you to understand and participate in the buying process and help you in planning and administering your ongoing collection investment!

No matter who you are or what age art affects you. Often times when a person says rules, especially to an artist, the hair on the back of their neck stands straight up and the first thing they think without saying anything is I don’t accept those rules and I’ll do everything in my power to push the boundaries of those rules. Just to let you know these really are not rules, they are some insights, hopefully some suggestions, for you to better understand and set up for yourself a way of looking, buying, and experiencing all the true pleasures of art and all it has to offer.

It’s about what you love and what you desire to have. These two elements will not only ensure the longevity of any purchase but they will increase in value. That value may or may not be something that is a tangible asset for you, but it will be an intangible asset and that’s why we can call it “priceless”, “your priceless art”. Would you, could you put a value number on the one you love, your family, your relationships? The answer is absolutely, NO! You may or you may not find that a monetary value may be applied at any point to your purchase, excluding an appraisal for insurance purposes, or at some point you may find you’ve hit the mother load. Individuals have bought art for reasons only known to them, only to find out that they had a piece of work that the world valued at 10,000 times what they originally paid for it. Many would have you believe that your collection will be worth hundreds and thousands of dollars more than the value that you paid. That truly remains to be seen. The factors that would make that completely true are as remote as winning the lottery, but some people do win the lottery. Here’s the point. It shouldn’t even be in your consideration, not on your radar. Come to the point of buying art because it truly does something to you and you love it and have to obtain it.

Here’s the difficulty, do you know what art does that for you? If you do, fantastic, move on buy some priceless art and continue to build your collection. However, if you’re not totally sure or want to hone your experiences and refine your objects, if that’s possible with “love” then follow this along.  Set up a self evaluation period to analyze what you love and what art moves you. Study, test yourself, retest and refine your looking, researching, and seeking out to give you a picture of what it is that is in your mind’s eye that you want to look for and build a collection around. Pause right here and remember this expression, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. Setting yourself up in this situation is not a quick fix, slam dunk for you to say, Gee, I love Picasso!” I’m off to buy a collection. While that may or may not be true what is true is art can move you and finding art as well as an artist who gives you those emotions can become “priceless’ in treating against and for the worlds cares, stress, strain, depression, loneliness, grieving, relationships, loves, resting places, pauses, uplifts and exhilarations only to name a few outcomes. As has been mentioned throughout the site “life is better through art” and why shouldn’t you have something that gives more to you daily than you could ever give to it? Why should you be reminded of great experiences and great memories of people who contributed or still contribute to your life? Why shouldn’t you embrace something that makes your work environment positive and livable or something that enhances your life each and every time you are home reminding you of the best times you’ve experienced? Why should you stop for a brief moment from life’s stresses and strains and problems and smile, contemplate, and look at the color, engage the shape, wonder about the artist, the composer of the work that visually takes your breath away? Why not?  

Isn’t it time to really evaluate and start or reorganize that collection you’ve wanted or started or are in the midst of planning and gathering. Making time for this is truly important in any collection process. The fine art of examining and categorizing as well as planning space, storage and filing is paramount in collecting. Every piece should of course come with a letter or certificate of authenticity and you should take the time to digitally photograph each piece, print it, add it to an individual folder. You might want to add an evaluation sheet letting you see as you go along if there are changes to the loves that come your way. Plus they will add real enjoyment as you review and go back to examine them.  If you are starting out or want to take some of those purchases you made and form a collection then send some time evaluating what you have, what you would like to have and how you might get there. Once you’ve done your evaluation and are equipped to start looking you want to map out where you may start looking (covered in “Art Lives and Art Everywhere”). You’ll want to have a budget potentially set in place and make sure when you go out you have the back up funds to take advantage if and when your encounter happens. Many people like to look and re-look and then decide. Evaluating price, potential changes in price as well as other considerations often lead to longer periods of purchasing potential. One thing always to remember is you may not be the only one looking and its not necessarily like any retail purchase that you can go find it later. You do have a better chance if it’s a reproduction and you know the source or it’s a new technology original coming to life upon the request and whims of the artist.

Collecting means knowing not only what you love, but the medium and the source used in the work of art. In other words, original oil my be one of a kind, computer generated oils copy the strokes of the artist and then are enhanced by other artists afterwards. Polychrome prints and Giclee have been produced from the artwork on designed papers or canvas in a new technology format, as can also be done to photography, watercolors pastels and more. Prints from woodcuts, wood engraving; lino-cuts, stamp prints, engravings; dry point, mezzotints, etching, photo-etching, collagraphs, lithographs, mylar, collotypes, as well as a host of other processes are valuable and have a consideration in the original art forum. You can find out more about each of these processes by searching the web.

Many people would say its not original art if it not produced by the artist and is the only one of its kind. Today looking at the way things become art is an art unto itself. A question I would ask is that if a digital artist produces a work is it only an original in the computer or what would you call the output of his work? Is it not an original? New technologies and the way art is changing is the same way photography changed portrait painting except a gazillion times faster and with a multitude of alternatives in categories that haven’t even been created yet.

All of these factors have to be addressed and taken into consideration in buying art and in collecting art. Don’t get bogged down with all the semantics, push forward and start. Many of these concerns take care of themselves as you find and search out what you love in your endeavor to find priceless art. Paper, pen, a good notebook to take notes and build information that will help you on your pathway becomes essential to the entire process.

In addition, determining how you will interact with artists, other collectors, museums, galleries and other related personnel is also important to your quest. Dig in visit other sites on collecting and building a collection as well as other related information all available to you. The more you know the better off and more secure you’ll be with your pursuit and the more satisfied you’ll be with each and every piece you decide to purchase.

Here are some other tips from “art-collecting.com” and here are some other ways on how to get started from “www.artadvice.com.”
 
As was said in the section in “Buying 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 accomplished something quite amazing.

Go ahead get art for your heart, pull the trigger and go find your “priceless” work. Maybe you won’t be like the Herb & Dorothy Vogel, but the pathway is a great pathway and a wonderful road to travel. It doesn’t have to overwhelm you and it doesn’t have to drive you. You can crank it out to a fever pitch or you can back it off to a complete stop. Don’t forget you are in the drivers seat, you are in control and you call all the shots. Just enjoy the ride, from the backed up pace of city living to the exploration of the countryside; form the slow upward climb of the mountain side to the squealing danger of the curves and cliffs as you come down. It’s a journey and one you’ll love. Happy trails because the rainbow of art for your heart will always be with you.