Eldon Gardens
As the 20th Century was drawing to a close a friend of mine said we should be selling online art. At the time I knew very little about the internet or the world wide web as we used to call it back then. We were doing very well selling our paintings from a gallery we had in Eldon Gardens Shopping Centre in Newcastle. However, I wanted no time in buying my domain name alanreed.com. A young IT chap was building a website for a business partner, so I asked him to build one for me. My memories of that first site are vague, there were only 12 paintings on view. The designer said it had an online shop, but it didn’t! Within a few weeks of having my online art, a client called in to my gallery. He said he had seen one of my paintings of Iona on my website and could he buy it. The painting was over £1000. Suddenly I saw the potential of the internet. I invested in having a brand new website designed, this time with a shopping facility so that customers could buy my online art.
Kidney Transplant
Two years after alanreed.com hit the web, Susan and I had an operation at the Freeman Hospital where I gave her one of my kidneys. The following year we took a much needed rest in Umbria, Italy. During this trip I purchased some lovely leather bound sketchbooks from the Fabriano Paper Factory in the Marche Region. Even though the sketchbooks were not available to purchase, I posted the sketches as online art. They were seen by a young couple living in Umbria who had just restored some farm buildings as holiday lets. They asked us to stay with them for me to produce a painting for them to use as a postcard for guests. This was the start of a friendship which is now in its 20th year. Over the years we have stayed at Casa San Gabriel many times. We also ran our reedart painting holidays from a nearby property Chiesa del Carmine which they were managing. Our guests loved the holidays we organised. Lots of painting commissions came off the back of these holidays.
Oman
It was my website that opened up a door to the Gulf. An agent had seen came across my paintings of palm trees painted of Key West, Florida. He asked if I’d be interested in painting some commissions for the Sultan of Oman. I initially thought he was joking but to my surprise, the work began to come through. To date I’ve received more than 30 commissions from the government in Oman. This has led to many business trips to Oman, Dubai and Kuwait which have included exhibitions in all three countries.
Bait Muzna Exhibition
Today there is a generation of artists who don’t know what business was like without online art. Social media is a constantly changing platform for promoting your art. An interesting art video can receive thousands of views within an hour on Tik Tok and Instagram. It can all be rather overwhelming, but I guess it’s helping us to stay young!