The fair was on for a long weekend from 11:00am till 11:00pm every day and for safety, we had to take everything home overnight and set it up again the next morning.

It was quite hard for us to cover the hours involved, but we met our neighbours, who were very friendly, and we also had many visitors which helped the time pass quickly. Sadly, it was a dead loss - not one sale! But I got to meet the owner of a well-established gallery, in the golden mile, that invited me to have a chat later.

The outcome was that I was told they would be interested in my pictures, but only if I scrap my marketing basis and instead make much larger prints at least 120cm and limit the edition to a maximum of 8, then to price them at about 5,000 euros each!

I was shocked, but as none had sold, I could consider doing this.

About a month later, I was invited to see an exhibition at that gallery, so I went, and it was by a photographer I had not heard of, all the pictures were huge and priced even higher than 5,000 euros each, and a couple were shown as sold (hard to know if they had really sold).

They wanted me to provide them with a few very large prints preferably sandwiched between aluminium and a thick acrylic sheet for them to see (these were expensive to produce and could not be done by my Spanish printer). Although on metal they would still be very fragile and if scratched, or if an edge were dented, they would no longer be saleable, so I did not proceed.

Instead, I decided to create a new part of my website to offer these large prints, as limited editions, that I would only create to order. The gallery had told me that I could have them printed and mounted the way they wanted in Germany. Luckily, I did not desperately need to sell them and thought this could be the best way of testing market. www.artist-john-cohen.net

I listed them at 4,700 euros for the biggest size, signed and numbered, with the edition set at 8, no matter what size they would like to have. Later I created a new separate website devoted to my limited-edition prints. Like most artists, these might sell better once I have died . . . But I am not in any hurry!


Juanje Nunez

We have also had a good special relationship with our financial adviser Juanje Nunez (with our Spanish Bank) unlike managers that keep changing we have been with Juanje from the beginning.

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