'Briar Patch Paintings Interview'

Briar Patch Paintings Interview

Name of your website?

Briar Patch Paintings

Your name?

Sandra Slade

Your Location (city, etc)

Purvis

Please give us a short summary of your website?

Online gallery of original oil paintings by Mississippi artists, Sandra Slade.

What inspired you to launch your own website?

I needed a way of showing my art worldwide while I could be in the studio painting.

When did you launch your first website, and what was it?

July 2006

How did you decide on a name for your website?

I recently moved back onto my old homeplace. It required much landscape cleaning. This place always had lots of dewberry and blackberry vines all over. As children my brothers and I picked these berries for jams and jellies that my mom put up.

What makes it different from other, similar offerings?

My site like my art is my own work. I used a site builder to help with the HTML aspect but all the pages began on a white slate without any templates. Design and content is completely mine.

What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)

I want to keep the site up and add new work as it is completed. For a while I'll keep sold pieces on just for the sake of a portfolio for anyone to view when deciding on art and/or artists.

How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?

Art never balances. But the reward in producing art is unmatched.

If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?

I would be able to run feature ads on all the magor search engins.

If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?

All my art is original. As yet no painting has been reproduced in any form. If request for the same piece became frequent, I might consider prints of selected pieces; but only if the original was available and any future buyer was aware and agreed that the original was made availabe by prints to others.

What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?

Advertising.

What has been your biggest challenge?

Balancing time on web site and in studio.

How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?

The site has run for 17 months. I'll keep it up as long as possible.

How long have you painted?

I've painted for over 25 years. Except for a few months under the instruction of Dan Brown in Benbrook, Texas, I'm self taught. I began with the first water color set that I received as a chile for Christmas. Oil is my medium of choice.

What is your website address?

Briar Patch Paintings

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