Art, it’s an uncommon product, and normally, they’re one of a kind so they are quite expensive. But an artist has to make a living like any other so why not behave like this french artist and make the following setup:

You create art, with your own significant style, and you advertise yourself on your website. On this website you also showcase what you have made. What you also do is sell directly from the website for a good price.

I can imagine that the step from finding an artist to buying a piece of art is the biggest, this makes that step much smaller. Who would make a trip to Bordeaux where her gallery is based on a website alone? But I can spend some money on something I seem to like. And this allows anyone that finds you to get a good indication of price, even when they don’t want to buy right away. I would say that it would be most interesting if the artist also created a premium product line that would only be sold in select gallery’s. This way you can still get the more common work directly, but for the really exquisite pieces you would have to visit the gallery and pay a (much) higher price. This would also allow you to involve people even more with your painting, add them to the tribe to use Seth’s words.

I think this goes for more than just paintings, any type of product of which the value is determined mostly by taste would benefit from this approach. Think designer furniture, jewelery, photographs (which are like paintings) or even something intangible like a service.