It can take a lifetime to amass a collection of artworks but what to do if you’re in a hurry? Go online, of course.
Gallery walls have been a major trend for several years now. But of course, hanging pictures on your walls was a thing long before anyone came up with the idea of a gallery wall. And while some people naturally acquire things they like and frame them, others don’t know where to start. Realistically, it can take a lifetime to amass a collection of artworks, and who has time for that?
Art lover and tech visionary Cathy Glazer came up with a solution. Her online gallery, Artfully Walls, is dedicated to providing something for everyone, with all tastes catered for with the same approach to high-quality printing and framing. It’s a carefully curated yet vast and diverse archive of artworks of all kinds, where everything can be bought in a variety of sizes, with several framing options, and each piece is printed to order as a museum quality fine art print with archival inks on premium paper and canvas. It’s a seemingly infinite resource, and its genius lies not only in Glazer’s professional eye for quality but in the technology that organises an enormous body of work into a searchable library.
Because how is a person supposed to choose? When faced with thousands of potential pictures, even the most decisive person will likely feel exhausted. And where to begin? Searching by artist is an obvious starting point, but only for someone who knows artists that they like. Maybe medium? So you might search photography, say, or watercolour, or collage, or illustration. This is where Artfully Walls comes into its own. You might search something more abstract, such as, say ‘abstract’ or ‘landscape’ or ‘portrait’. You might like cats and search that, or seascapes, or architectural drawings, or botanical images. You might want something that’s mostly red to go with your sofa. You might want something traditional or something experimental. Each image is so precisely tagged and categorised that searches are impressively accurate.
Alternatively, the archive includes a large series of designer picks, where people from all over the world with an eye for design offer up their own gallery walls for inspiration. Most of us don’t have tastes that are entirely consistent, and these walls show how pieces can work together even if any algorithm wouldn’t classify them together.
All of this data creates an excellent resource for analysing trends too. Current demand shows a diversity of popular choices, with lots of searches for Greek and Roman motifs, as well as 18th century oil paintings. Linocuts are in vogue, as are portraits. You heard it here first.
