Printmaker Annie Smits Sandano told to boycott prints.co.nz

Auckland contemporary print-maker Annie Sandano is today under pressure from her high st galleries to stop promoting her original prints through www.prints.co.nz

This is the first time we have heard of conventional gallery owners pressuring artists to stop selling their work through companies like New Zealand Fine Prints that primarily sell New Zealand artworks online. Is this something to do with the recession squeezing conventional galleries paying those high st rentals to be in the right suburbs we wonder?

Many conventional New Zealand galleries have superb online stores, lots of artists now sell direct from their own websites and companies like New Zealand Fine Prints, TradeMe and Artfind have helped artists grow their sales enormously over the last ten years.

Times have changed and of course artists should be reaching the largest possible audience for their work using the internet.

We say lets see who can sell the most prints for our artists and we'll continue to focus on our customers rather than our competitors - as we know that's what generates ongoing sales in the long term!