Pamela Jeanne Weston says she began having creative visions when she was 3 years old.
Today, Weston is an artist who’s sold her large canvas paintings to wealthy buyers and companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. for as much as $1 million.
Now Weston is part of a bid to bridge a divide in the art world,original works versus reproductions. She’s working with Irvine-based ArtdeSoul to create high quality reproductions and sell them alongside.
She’s set to sell her own work alongside that of other artists on the company’s Web site.
“I’m putting all my energy behind the site,” she said. “I would reproduce any piece.”
About 20 artists have signed on to sell their work through ArtdeSoul.com, which starts up next month. ArtdeSoul strikes deals with artists to sell originals and prints. Like a gallery, ArtdeSoul takes a percentage of sales. Artists keep a significant chunk of reproduction sales.
Artists include Laguna Beach painters Ron Burkhardt, Davy Liu and Paul Heussenstamm, and Kornelius Schorle, a panoramic photographer and owner of Irvine-based Pro Photo Connection.
ArtdeSoul joins a lot of other sites in selling art online. They include India’s Artilysis.com, which sells original art, and Emeryville’s Art.com Inc., which sells reproductions.
Stressing Quality
The company’s angle is high quality prints of original art on canvas or posters.
A 9-inch by 12-inch canvas of any painting sells for $43. A 16-inch by 24-inch poster goes for $45. Eventually, ArtdeSoul hopes to reproduce art on postcards and T-shirts, said Barbara Kaufman, a cofounder.
ArtdeSoul also is talking with stores, wholesalers and interior designers about offering the company’s art and prints.
Mark Hinds, another cofounder and ArtdeSoul’s primary financier, said the idea behind the company is to give artists an inexpensive way to promote and sell their work.
Unless artists have the money for printing, selling reproductions isn’t a viable option, Hinds said.
ArtdeSoul can help the “struggling artist” who does good work but lacks the money or the business savvy to market and promote.
“We will act as a production company for them,” he said.
Not every artist can sell through ArtdeSoul. There are conditions, primarily that the work be “powerful and uplifting. No dark art,” Hinds said.
Hinds’ goal for the first year is humble,survival.
“When you’re doing something that’s never been done before, it’s a learning experience,” he said.
His ultimate goal is lofty: “change the way art is represented and sold.”
Hinds is an author and entrepreneur. He’s a partner in an alternative healthcare clinic in San Diego. He handles the technical side of the business. A team in the Philippines, friends of Hinds, developed the Web site.
Artists are presented online through a video.
“The video adds some intimacy,” Hinds said.
The video aspect appeals to painter Burk-hardt: “I found that very compelling,” he said.
This is Hinds first art venture.
“I have very good friends who are artists,” he said. “I don’t know anything about the business.”
Artist Rep
That’s where Kaufman comes in. Kaufman is a psychologist who has represented several artists including Burkhardt and Weston. She and Hinds met at the Chopra Center at La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad about two years ago.
“She’s amazing with relationships and people,” he said. “She understands art. I’m good at startup, development and technology.”
Technology is key to ArtdeSoul. One of the big problems with reproductions has been quality, Kaufman said.
ArtdeSoul needed a scanner and printer that could produce prints that didn’t look fake. Panoramist Schorle led Kaufman to an obscure and pricey scanner from Germany that goes for $180,000. The scanner is big enough to scan paintings as large as Weston’s.
They use a Giclee printer (French for eject) to make reproductions on canvas.
ArtdeSoul, which employs about 15 people, has a 7,000-square-foot headquarters, which serves as an office, gallery and warehouse space.
Paintings arrive in wooden crates and are placed in wooden slots until they’re ready to be scanned. ArtdeSoul is scanning about 150 of Weston’s originals.
Laguna Canyon artist Burkhardt liked that idea. Burkhardt, known for a discipline he developed called “Notism,” blends his every day manic handwritten notes with his paintings. He sells his work for $3,000 to $30,000.
He paints on large canvas and hasn’t been able to scan his work. Burkhardt plans to use the high-resolution images to make postcards, reproductions for books or for e-mailing samples of his paintings.
He’s tentative about selling reproductions but is open to the idea.
“I’ve never been big in that arena,” he said. “That aspect I’m waiting to see how it unfolds and develops.”
After the 2001 terrorist attacks, Burkhardt said he left a career as a New York ad man. Business dried up.
“It became hard to be excited about staying witty and clever,” he said.
Burkhardt said he aims to make a living solely from his art. Local galleries aren’t a fit for him, he said. He’s got high hopes for ArtdeSoul.
“My work is abstract,” Burkhardt said. “It would be great if they could become the Google of the art world.”
