Building an Art Gallery: What I Learned Representing Artists Globally

Two years ago, I founded an online art gallery representing artists from around the world.

I built it from the ground up; designing and developing the platform and brand, creating the copy and content, marketing and promoting artists, building relationships with collectors, managing sales, and overseeing the day-to-day business.

In short, I wore just about every hat.

Recently, I decided to close that chapter.

Not because it failed.

Quite the opposite.

The gallery became a valuable and deeply educational part of my career. I worked with talented artists from different countries, built relationships with collectors, learned the realities of selling art online, and gained a much deeper understanding of the business behind the art world.

I’m proud of what I built.

But eventually, I started asking myself a different question:

What do I actually want to keep building?

I’ve always been drawn to creating things from the ground up. With a background in business, I enjoy the entire process; the initial idea, the strategy, the design, the problem-solving, and eventually watching something that existed only in your head become real.

The gallery gave me the opportunity to do that within the art world.

It also taught me something about myself.

I like building, but I don’t necessarily want to build the same thing forever.

Sometimes a project can be successful, meaningful, and worth every minute you put into it and still reach a natural ending.

That was the case here.

Closing the gallery wasn’t about walking away from something that didn’t work. It was about recognizing that I had taken the experience as far as I wanted to take it.

And I’m comfortable with that.

I don’t know exactly what the next chapter will look like yet.

There are ideas taking shape, possibilities I’m curious about, and plenty I haven’t imagined.

For now, I’m back at the easel working on my own paintings again. Creating art has been the constant I’ve returned to in different forms throughout my life, so perhaps it was inevitable that I’d find my way back to it once again.

The gallery taught me a great deal about art, business, people, and myself.

I’m taking all of it with me.

One chapter is closing.
The next one is open.