Melanie Burnell – online art entrepreneur

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Sue Ward talks to Melanie Burnell, owner of Artists Info, a leading online art gallery

Sue Ward: How did you get into the world of art, did you paint as a youngster or was a member of your family working in some aspect of art?

Melanie Burnell: Art was my favourite subject at school and my parents were very supportive of me while carving a career out from it. My dad was very good at drawing so I must have got my skills from him! I wanted to work as a creative art director in a big ad agency in London. I was good at English too so liked the idea of developing strap lines and copy as well as creating visuals. Oddly enough I found business studies at school really boring and was completely uninterested in business!

After school I went to Watford School of Art & Design, the college the top ad agency’s picked new graduates from. I studied fine art, graphic design, and photography. I passed with Merit and got my first job as a junior designer in a small advertising agency in Harpenden, Hertfordshire. I learned a lot from the two senior designers, Keith and Pete, who mentored me, and I designed logos, leaflets and point-of-sale marketing material for the company’s clients, including large blue chip drinks brands such as Tia Maria and Carlsberg. I also learned how to use design programs on the Apple Mac computer, including Photoshop, which I really enjoyed.

I then moved to a high tech (at the time!) and much larger American-based company in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. I worked in the design studio with Paula and Christian, who again took me under their wing as I was young, ambitious and eager to learn. I became proficient at designing in various Mac programs. I enjoyed it very much but sometimes wondered what it would be like to be going out with clients on the sales team.

I left at age 20 to have my daughter and enjoyed decorating my flat, making a nice home for us. I was inspired by popular TV programmes, such as ‘Changing Rooms’ and embarked on business courses funded by the government, and was supported by The Prince’s Trust. A business mentor from the Trust helped me write a business plan and even awarded me a small loan and grant (£1500 in total.)

I developed a real passion for business, especially for sales and marketing, and I took various stands at House & Home exhibitions across the country, wrote press releases that were published in the local press, and began getting regular artwork and interior design commissions for domestic and commercial clients.

In 2007 I set up my own art gallery in a small rented barn near Hitchin, Hertfordshire, where I showcased the work of 15 artists at any one time. Two years later in the depths of the recession, I took on a huge, split-level derelict old building in the heart of Bedfordshire. With a business partnerI turned it into a thriving arts centre. We exhibited the work of hundreds of local and emerging artists aas well as many published artists. We ran art workshops and soiree evenings, life drawing classes, offered a bespoke framing and printing service and even had a family portrait photography studio! People came from miles around to visit our lovely arts centre and we had ten staff.

Sadly, the overheads were too high for us to sustain it so we decided to move our artists online. I worked at the centre by day and on our website by night, working with a Web developer for 18 months. We closed the centre and launched our online art gallery at the end of 2011.

SW: You became ill and your business partner took over the online gallery, but later you decided to start artistsinfo.co.uk.  How did that come about?

MB: I was sad to lose my business but I used the time during my recovery to learn about new technologies and digital media.

Buying and selling art online is now a huge industry. Rebecca Wilson, a director of Saatchi Gallery was recently quoted saying they sell more art in a month than most bricks and mortar galleries do in a year. The BBC recently reported that buying art online is now becoming an industry norm with sales worth an estimated £40bn and estimated to be growing by 20% each year.

Fully recovered, in the summer of 2012 I set to work with a new business partner developing Artists Info, a high-tech version of my original site. It launched in March this year and is already top of Google and YouTube. We have over 80,000 weekly art followers and have just won an award for the best online art gallery! We are developing pioneering apps and virtual art galleries – technology has come such a long way since my first site, especially in the last year or so and we are very lucky to have an amazing team of technicians working with us.

SW: What do you find is the biggest difference between working in a conventional gallery and working through an online gallery?

MB: The biggest difference is the workload. There is no constant hanging of work and organizing spaces. There are also not the huge overheads, which takes a lot of pressure off. For people who want to buy original art but don’t have the time to trawl art galleries, buying art online from an easy-to-navigate site like ours is a great solution.  And for artists there is no insurance to worry about, manning an exhibition or the logistics of lugging their art around! There is also much less expense involved with exhibiting online. Win, win, win!

SW: How do you promote your gallery?

MB: We promote our artist’s news on our blog and social networks reaching over 80,000 art fans every week. Artists Info is ranked on Page 1 of Google and gets over 12,000 visitor hits each month. Our Art Channel is ranked No1 on YouTube and has had over 13,000 views. We reach a further 70,000+ people/week through our social media sites and social network connections including our association with the massively popular global art sharing movement ‘The Artistic Blog’.  We get further exposure through our popular Facebook, Twitter & Pinterest pages. Other promotional opportunities include offline exhibitions, our Hollywood Showcase, interviews on The Cultural Review Show, publishing opportunities and much more! In fact, we just don’t stop promoting our artists! Check out our site for more information and to see what our artists say about exhibiting with us.

SW:  How can you help artists sell more work and gain that all-important exposure?

MB:  A gallery listing on Artists Info is a great way for artists to gain exposure to a much larger audience because it’s a readymade market place,making them easier to find. Just having a link from our site to theirs boosts their site’s search engine optimization. We are endorsed by some big names in the art world including Carne Griffiths, a hugely successful UK artist, and are proud of our far-reaching reputation for discovering and sharing talented artists from across the globe.

All our artists get our Stamp of Approval as a selected and verified artist, which adds credential to their websites and we promote our artists in lots of ways through our site, YouTube channel, social media and extended networks. We’re a very friendly team of people who value all our artists and customers and are always on hand to offer advice on anything from pricing to writing a review on their work. If we can help, we will. 

SW: You evidently know a lot of artists – how do you find them?

MB: I have worked with around 400 artists from my days running my bricks and mortar galleries. I like to visit art shows and I use the Internet to find artists. I have a number of ‘talent scouts’ who also help me discover artists. We are always looking for new talent, from painters to potters, silversmiths to sculptors. Artists should email us two images of their work with a link to their website if they have one and a short bio.

SW:  You obviously enjoy art very much. What kind of art do you prefer personally?

MB:  I love all kinds of art, especially very large, textured abstract paintings. I am a big fan of colour and also like mixed-media work. Sometimes I see beauty in the smallest of things, maybe a card or a small photo and I feel inspired to create something large and breathtaking from it. I am currently working on a series of abstract photographs that a friend took on his travels around the world. I’m compiling them into a sequence, which I will then photograph and re-align. I can see the finished artwork in my mind! Being creative is a gift and I feel very blessed to be able to create and appreciate art. I cannot imagine not having art in my life.

SW:  There must be more artists working today than in any earlier period of history. This makes for a very competitive art scene – how can an artist try to stand out from the crowd?                    

MB:  Yes, there are more artists but there are also more outlets. The Internet is a great tool. While it’s a given to have your own website and Facebook page these days, joining a popular online art network such as Artists Info will help give you the exposure you need. Being an artist isn’t easy. It wasn’t then, it isn’t now. But by sticking together and helping to promote one another, staying focused and strong, it can be a rewarding career.

SW: What are the trends among artists now? Is there a dominant direction, among those you know?

MB:  I have seen a strong trend towards photography in the last few years and there are some very talented artists out there making their name in the art world. It wasn’t so long ago that many high street galleries didn’t consider photography to be art. Now I am seeing more and more photographers establish themselves as artists. I think it’s great!

SW: What sort of people are buying art these days? Are they looking for investments or because they genuinely want art they can live with and enjoy over a long period?

MB: Buying art for serious investment has always been and will always be a very lucrative endeavour for a select few. Most people buy art because they love it; it enriches our lives, and enhances living/working space. And one of the biggest pleasures of buying original art is that you just don’t know if you are investing in a future star. I love that, and sometimes find myself buying pieces purely because I have a hunch that the artist may be the Picasso of tomorrow!

SW: You have a new campaign to support artists. Can you tell us more about that?

MB: The Support Independent Artists Campaign has been created to help encourage people to support and buy from independent artists and artisans directly. When you connect and buy from independent artists direct you are helping to support them as well as saving on gallery-added commission. This is an enjoyable, personal experience and is often surprisingly affordable – and you are potentially investing in a future star.

Being an artist is not an easy career choice as it can be difficult to make a living from it. The talent, tenacity and passion which many artists possess is admirable and they deserve recognition, support and encouragement. It’s easy to show your support. If you have a love and appreciation of art, you can help us by displaying our badge on your own website (available to download from our blog, on our site) and we’ll add you to our Supporters List which we will promote across all our networks to our 80,000 weekly art followers. Simply email us a link to your site that displays our badge together with a sentence or two about you, your favourite independent artist/s and how or why you support the campaign. If you do not have a website you can still get involved – just share our lovely quote (see the campaign’s blog post on our site) on your social networks or by email, and let us know!

SW: Thank you for talking to Cassone - we wish you every success.