An Andy Blank original photograph. (Andy Blank)
July 10, 2019 By Laura Hanrahan
Greenpoint, known as a hub for local artists, is now home to one creator who is hoping to find success selling original, hand-made fine art pieces, but at affordable prices.
With artwork in galleries often priced in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the artist, who operates under the moniker Andy Blank, is hoping to take advantage of what he sees as a missed opportunity.
“I saw this gaping hole of an affordable market right in front of me,” Blank said. “It was just so obvious to me.”
Blank, a self-taught artist, says he was surrounded by artists in the fine art industry for years before deciding to take on this new venture. His years of exposure to the industry, he says, have taught him what types of pieces are most in demand, and he uses that to inform his creations.
Blank operates across several different mediums, selling original photos, paintings, drawings and embossings. He began working on the collection roughly a year ago in a 22,000 square foot studio just off Greenpoint Avenue, and has been selling the pieces for four months.
While he says photography has grown to be his favorite medium, he is also fond of painting with resin—a compound added to paint that hardens with a clear glossy finish, giving texture to the artwork. Blank sometimes steps outside the confines of a typical canvas, creating his colorful abstract resin paintings on unusual objects such as skateboards.
Resin painted skateboards. (Andy Blank)
The price point of Blank’s art pieces, which range from $99 to $199, reflect what he believes to be the true price of what went in to each piece, rather than the heightened price tag often slapped on by galleries.
“It’s such inflated prices, it’s actually so fascinating,” Blank said. “Everything you would buy for a normal artist working at a gallery, selling his artwork that would go for thousands of dollars, it’s just not as expensive as you guys think. It’s just the inflated price of the gallery. I’m giving you the honest price of what it took me to make it.”
With there being such a lack of affordable fine art, Blank says that he and his team see the brand as becoming a worldwide success.
“I don’t want it to just be the neighborhood artist,” Blank said. “We want this to be huge.”
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One Comment
Good idea! Best Wishes of much success. Very true “lack of affordable fine art”.