publicity – Emma Cownie

Great feature in Walesonline and the Western Mail today on how art therapy is helping me to recover from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and how painting still helps me therapeutically today. I do not know where I would be if it was not for art and painting. Also I am thankful for my husband, Seamas, who runs all the art business side of things, as well as being my agent.

This frees me up and allows me the time to simply paint and nothing else. I paint when not teaching as I need to, it is an essential element of my therapeutic recovery from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD is a condition that can only be managed and is unlikely to ever return to “normal”. As the article states, it has left me with reduced energy levels and things can threaten to overwhelm me sometimes so I need time out with my oils!

As I paint so much the paintings obviously started stock piling so my husband decided to try and sell them. He contacted Artfinder and went online there. As we started selling from the start, we have kept going although I would paint regardless and I need to. So there you have it. That’s me. Thanks to you too for all your support, likes, comments, well wishes and friendship. It means a lot to us.

Lopsided Trees Professional quality signed mounted print £45

GUEST POST BY EMMA COWNIE: PROMOTING ARTWORK VIA VIDEO

Emma Cownie is an artist based in Swansea. To see more of her work, please visit her website at http://emmacownie.artweb.com/.

Using Video As A Promotional Tool

I wanted to promote my artwork in a different manner to the promotion normally done by Art Galleries. I wanted to promote it while at the same time promoting the idea of buying artwork via online galleries, especially those such as my own art website on Artweb.com… so I came up with the idea of promoting artwork via a YouTube video.

“Up Your Street!?”

I then tried to work out a pitch, or a ‘hook’ if you like, linking online galleries with the fact that, generally, I ship artwork to art-lovers to places as far away as Australia (a popular destination for my work), via the postal service.

Then I came across this image sent to me by another online gallery, with whom I have an online collection:

I thought instantly about how we artists send artwork around the world and how metaphorically, via postal services, we are posting from one street to another.

We are all a global village of artists and art-lovers, and we are all on the same street in a sense. Then I thought as I looked up the street in this image that I am delivering artwork to art-lovers who like my artwork, so in terms of slang, my artwork must be “up their street.”

From there I thought to myself, so if we are all on the “same street” in this global village/market, where would you be likely to find my work on this “street”?

Implementing The Concept…

So for this idea, I decided my video should go through all the places on a street that you might find my work, such as online galleries on your PC, laptop, iPad or Smartphone, to real life galleries, to LED lights, to advertising screens, to displayed on banners, in newspaper print, to delivered giclee prints. I then went on to show areas in one’s home where you would find my artwork, such as over the mantelpiece etc. The video concludes with suggesting that wherever you find my artwork, I hope you find it “up your street”. This double meaning or promotional “hook” and will hopefully make you think twice – that if you like my artwork, potentially it will find it’s way, literally up your street… in other words you like it enough to buy and have it posted to you!

The video is here!

Response

Generally I think it is useful to use video as a promotional tool because you can show a lot of your artwork in a very short space of time, and if accompanied by music, it can heighten the enjoyment of looking at one’s artwork. I have had some great feedback on the video with some art-lovers watching it over and over again. I chose this song, because it had the refrain “I fall in love with the light” which reminded me of Derain’s “the substance of painting is light.”