Canvasart.ie – Fair Pay for Creatives sponsored by Sihl GmbH

We encounter beautiful art reproductions daily in our homes, work and leisure areas, and public buildings and often do not give the creative process a second thought. We also tend to forget that behind these reproductions are the very artists who created them, putting colour and class into our otherwise colourless world.

The Art of Survival

The digital print market today is flooded with mass produced canvas art, which devalues and desensitises the creative process and the work of the artist in the eyes of the consumer. The Artist is expected to sell a high volume of product for often minimal financial reward.

This is exactly where Chris Lanigan and Canvasart.ie come in with this Print-to-Order and Art-Marketing service.

“I’ve seen first-hand the perennial struggles of artists, photographers and designers to try to make a living. Their work and their professions are seriously undervalued with offers of work for exposure or a pittance widespread” Chris explains and jokes: “We would all love a Peggy Guggenheim type character to support our creative work financially but for the vast majority of artists and creatives, sorry, realistically it’s not going to happen.”

In his eyes, modern creatives also have to be business persons looking for opportunities to maximise their financial reward for the skills and talents they have developed. He is not satisfied with the way creatives are exploited.

The Canvasart.ie solution: A sales platform with fair margins

“You can either complain and do nothing or take the initiative to do something about it” Chris adds. He chose the latter and launched an website. It offers artists and other creatives the opportunity to enter into a one-year partnership and sell replicas of their own artwork yielding a fair margin via the integrated online shop.

He believes that the Covid-19 and environmental crisis provides an opportunity for creatives to realise their full potential by re-evaluating how they do business and start looking for fair financial reward. “I genuinely believe the world has started to realise what a horrific place it would be without creative arts and entertainment. Various forms of art and entertainment got many people through lockdown periods helping keep their sanity intact, and I feel it has opened many people’s eyes to how important it is to keep our creatives creating and the need to support them properly without the environmental scourge of mass production.”

Sihl supports through targeted sponsorship

Each new creative who joins the project will offer a Canvas print (subsidised cost) to use in a social media competition which will also showcase their other works. With Billy House from Éireography, Kevin King and Gems Designs Chris Lanigan has already brought three artists on board in addition to showcasing his own work. Sihl supports this great initiative and provides the canvas element with Clara Canvas Plus Matt AQ (3579) of the prize with a shout out also on our own social media channels.

Chris loves the Clara Canvas and has been using it himself for some time for his own canvas prints. “I have used so many canvases trying to get the correct balance of colour replication, strength and durability, acid free with no white scoring. I almost drove my local print partner crazy with this, but finally we found a solution using the Clara Canvas Plus Matt AQ from Sihl in combination with the 10 archival colour Epson Printer, that for me, ticks all the quality boxes.”