The Vancouver Courier
March 8, 2006
By Beverly Cramp, contributing writer

It's late fall, and Diane Farris is throwing a reception at her gallery on West Seventh Avenue. Guests are drinking wine and mingling as they examine works by Justin Ogilvie, one of the gallery's newest artists.

Farris slips outside for a quiet moment, a respite from the flurry of socializing inside. She can relax, briefly, because several of the works bear red dots on the picture labels, indicating they've been sold. Sales are one sign of a successful evening. But Farris wants more for Ogilvie.

She has a passion for art but she also needs to make money, and so Farris hopes Ogilvie's reputation will grow.

"Justin's painting is exquisite and I have lots of clients interested in his work," says Farris, a youthful-looking grandmother fashionably dressed in black and sporting a trendy hairstyle of spiked and highlighted hair. Ogilvie's work, she says, is a cross between the anatomical drawings of Old World masters like Michelangelo and Lucien Freud, a British artist known as one of the world's most powerful contemporary figurative painters. That's quite a breadth of technique, but it could also describe the kind of art Farris champions.

Farris became known for helping launch a group of Vancouver painters in the 1980s called the Young Romantics. The group included artists such as Attila Richard Lukacs, Angela Grossmann and Graham Gillmore. Farris still represents Grossmann, but not Lukacs and Gillmore.

"I don't work for Attila anymore after he announced, 'I have fired all my dealers-they never did as much for me as I did for them,'" she says.

The break with Lukacs shows how the relationship between artists and galleries can involve conflict. Lukacs still works in Vancouver but declined to comment for this story on the difficulties of the dealer/artist relationship. "I don't want to piss anyone off," he said, adding that he recently started working with a dealer again.

But as difficult as it sometimes might be, the relationship between artist and gallery dealer is crucial to the commercial gallery business. If the artist's role is to create art, the gallery owner, or gallerist as they call themselves, is the business brain behind the promotion and selling of art. Gallerists provide exhibition space and build extensive relationships with art buyers. Farris has a database of almost 7,000 buyers world-wide, a list that she has fostered through two decades. She knows what type of art each client likes, facts about their personal lives, perhaps their birthdays, and even which clients have invited her to stay with them when Farris is travelling near their homes.

For collectors who are serious about one of their artists, gallerists will arrange studio visits so that the buyer and artist can meet. And, of course, opening night receptions, hosted by dealers, are a staple of the business. These events generate quick sales and buzz about the artist. Through such activities, gallerists act as a conduit between artists and buyers, helping to educate art patrons about the vision and intent of the artists they represent.

But there's also something deeper at play for the serious commercial art gallerist. They aren't just peddling pretty pictures to hang on a wall or nifty sculptures to add glamour to the corners of rooms. Serious art gallerists work at a creation of their own: the development of artists capable of producing a significant body of work that will stand the test of time. Through making a name for the artists they represent, gallerists make a name for themselves. And by developing artists, commercial galleries incidentally provide a platform for important art in their community.

"There are two kinds of commercial art galleries," says Greg Bellerby, director of the Charles C. Scott Gallery, a public art gallery affiliated with the Emily Carr School of Art and Design. "Some operate primarily as retail stores that fill their retail space with art and invite customers to come in and browse. The other kind of gallery owner is intimately involved with the artists. They work to establish the artists and truly represent their work to the public and various clients they have. These gallerists make sure collectors understand and appreciate what the artist is trying to do with their work. It's not always about making sales. The good gallerists often lose money year after year on various artists they represent. It can take 10 to 20 years for an artist to develop and their work to mature."

Fostering an emerging artist's career is difficult. Some galleries fail.

Rent for gallery space is expensive, particularly if the location is on Granville Street between Sixth and 16th Avenues, an area so crowded with art galleries it's often called Gallery Row. Then there's staff, usually an assistant or two, and publicity costs. Although loath to talk about her monthly or annual cash flow, Farris reckons an opening night reception can cost upwards of $10,000 to $11,000 when overhead is factored into the estimate. Farris's only means of recouping the costs is to sell art. Ogilvie's paintings cost between $2,000 and $9,000 and Farris's commission will be 50 per cent, the average split between a dealer and artist.

In exchange for the gallerist's promotion and exhibition costs, artists usually sign agreements giving the art gallery a share of all their art sales, even if the sale doesn't come through the gallery. These agreements can be six months or six years long. There are no set rules, only terms the artist and gallerist agree to.

"There are a million ways to do business in the art market," says Vancouver artist Tiko Kerr, who has been painting for 24 years. "Heffel Gallery sells my artwork but they also allow me to sell on my own, out of my studio. We all feel that the more people that see my work, the better. This is an unusual arrangement and most galleries are more restrictive."

Kerr adds that Heffel now focuses on its successful auctioning business and doesn't provide all the traditional gallery services. "They're not providing me with exhibitions and I'm looking for other representation. Exhibitions are a very important part of the equation."

A gallerist can spend many hours and invest money to promote an emerging artist, only to lose them before their artwork becomes profitable. It's why those who survive learn to become choosy, picking artists whose work fits with the art the gallery is known for and carries the promise of creating value.

Some artists leave for rival commercial galleries, and in some cases the departure is inevitable. Artist Graham Gillmore, with whom Farris still has a good relationship, left when Farris realized he would be better off with a new dealer. "He started doing things with rubber hoses and I didn't know how to work with that," she says.

Also, new and challenging art doesn't always sell. Even mid-career or senior artists can be difficult for the public to understand, particularly if they produce conceptual work in which ideas take precedence over technique, execution and aesthetics.

Susan Almrud, the owner of State Gallery, recalls an incident when she was showing a contemporary photographic artwork by Roy Arden to a group of clients. "It was a beautiful piece of a squatter's shack. One of the clients said he didn't like the picture because it depressed him." But this feedback didn't deter Almrud. "I'm interested in art that creates reaction," she says. "Most people don't want to go there. They want pretty pictures that don't make them think."

Almrud, who opened her gallery in 2001 after a career in business marketing and consulting, says Vancouver collectors need to take more risks with emerging artists. "Without collectors buying work from emerging artists in galleries, there will be no galleries to act as platforms for young talent," she says. "Collectors [in Vancouver] tend to want to own what their friends and neighbours have. I see this in collectors' homes all the time, the same artists' works from collection to collection."

Almrud isn't suggesting that there aren't any sophisticated collectors willing to take a chance. There just aren't enough.

Vancouver public galleries are starting to take up the challenge of playing a more active role in the emerging art scene. One of Almrud's young artists, Kim Kennedy Austin, was asked to be part of the exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, called Classified Materials, which ended in early January.

Austin, whose prints and paintings sell for between $500 and $1,100, credited commercial galleries like State for giving her a start as an artist.

"They are often willing to show works that aren't saleable. This kind of art would only have been shown at artist run centres previously," she says, adding that commercial art galleries have an incentive to display difficult art. "It helps their reputations as leading contemporary purveyors of art to carry progressive art. I've only been out of school for four years but the galleries have been extremely supportive. Even though they operate on a business-oriented model, I've never found a gallery has tried to get me to change my art to make it sell."

Austin notices that the clients who see her artwork at State Gallery are well informed. "The people that come to my openings are a pretty specific and educated audience."

And while there may not be enough collectors willing to take a chance on challenging art, others believe Vancouver art patrons are growing in sophistication.

"When my wife and I decided to start collecting art five years ago, we took a course at Emily Carr to learn about it," says Sven Freybe, a member of the family that owns the sausage manufacturer Freybe Gourmet Foods. Freybe grew up in a household that collected art. His parents bought works from people like Vancouver photo-conceptual artists Ian Wallace. "As a kid, I was dragged through many museums and galleries in Europe and North America," Freybe says. "I love that I had that experience."

Freybe and his wife Juliette also visited various commercial galleries to find out about new and local artists. "Vancouver is blessed with a core group of very understanding and clever dealers who have a great eye for emerging artists. They're smart internationally, too," he says.

Gaining such international smarts takes an investment in time and money.

Many commercial art gallery owners travel to art fairs around the world to showcase their artists to international buyers and to curators from international museums and galleries. Anytime a Vancouver artist appears in an international art museum, they are written up in the show's catalogue.

"It makes a big difference to an artist's career," says Almrud. "There will be lasting documentation through the catalogue produced. This helps create new audiences for the artist."

Finding a wider audience for Canadian art gets more Canadian collectors interested in their homegrown artists. It's part of the phenomenon that Canadians don't appreciate their own talent until it's celebrated by the rest of the world.

Some galleries have changed their business model to reflect the need for a wider reach.

"Eighty per cent of our business is now done outside the city," says Tracey Lawrence who, along with her husband, has run her eponymous gallery, first on West Sixth Avenue and now on West Fourth Avenue, for seven years. Lawrence got her start working for a commercial gallery in London, England in the mid-1980s. She learned that international exposure is critical to the development of a Vancouver artist.

"We've been attending a young arts fair where we've been able to tap into new markets and forge relationships with other European galleries," Lawrence says, referring to the Liste Art Fair, established 10 years ago to show emerging galleries.

The Liste has a reputation for being an important platform for emerging art and young galleries. One third of the 150 galleries that have participated at the Liste, have later gained admittance to the Art Basel, "the granddaddy of all art fairs," says Lawrence. Art Basel, in Basel, Switzerland, is known as the most important art show in the world.

Lawrence says her gallery was the first Canadian gallery asked to go to the Liste. "We didn't even know how they got our name. We think one of our collectors put them on to us."

She believes her gallery was noticed because of its shift from showing traditional art to conceptual works. "Our programming had evolved enough to be considered," she says.

But while the invitation to a key European arts fair has been good for the gallery, Lawrence is surprisingly nervous about her long-term financial future.

The artists she represents are gaining recognition. Tim Lee, a 30-year old Vancouverite known for putting himself in his video and photographic works, has artwork in the collections at two of the world's most prestigious modern art venues: the Tate Modern in London, England and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Yet Lawrence worries about making enough art sales to cover her rent and other overhead costs. "The proof is still out. We hope we can stay in the business. The challenge is always to keep your doors open," she says.

She is not alone in these sentiments-many gallerists privately express similar worries. Finding hard and fast statistics that illustrate how tough the art business is and how many galleries fail is difficult, according to Andy Sylvester, owner of Equinox Gallery. "You have to rely on anecdotal evidence," he says. But he notes his gallery is doing well. "In the 34 years we've been in business, 2005 was the best year we've ever had. The art business in Vancouver has been on an upturn since the last recession in 1992."

After 20 years in the business, Farris often feels she is "just surviving." She jokes about a fellow gallerist who recently left the business: "We called his retirement party 'the envy party' because most of us would have loved to be in his shoes." She notes, however, that 2005 was a good year for her, too.

So why do gallerists continue in a chancy business in which the work they champion is not always appreciated?

Back at the reception for Ogilvie, Farris is increasingly happy. Patrons are buying, wine is being consumed and the number of paintings sold at Ogilvie's opening reception is a good start.

Giving him that good start, to aid both her gallery and promote progressive art for Vancouver and around the world, is what Farris pursues. "Good art still makes me catch my breath," she says.