Late last year, a Facebook friend posted something about a new art auction site, to be run by someone called The Brigham Galleries. The short story is that the owners had decided to close their “bricks and mortar” gallery location on Nantucket and instead sell exclusively through online auctions. They saw that there is a price gap between art sales on eBay (generally below $1000) and the big auction houses like Sotheby’s (generally over $500,000). That’s quite a bit of open territory. I went to their site and saw a couple names I recognized on their list of artists and became a fan on their Facebook page.

They announced an opportunity to submit work for the first auction as a “Juror’s Pick” and I decided to submit something. No cost, no risk. Why not give it a whirl? And, the painting above made the cut as a Juror’s Pick!

It’s been a bit of a long road for the women to get it all organized and has taken longer than they expected to get the site up and running. But, as of today, the auctions have begun! The listings are here. Mine is at the bottom of the first page. It’s Lot 35, Lot Item 1102. The auction will be for two weeks.

I’m very pleased with the quality and variety of work that they have for this very first round.

Will I get sales? Who knows? But it’s a new model that I hope will be successful. There is minimal risk to the artist- the work stays in the studio until it sells. And minimum expense- no shipping work back and forth, reasonable listing fees and an extremely reasonable commission upon sales.