Dudes & Demons by Portland Artist, Teri Fahrendorf, https://www.raindragonstudio.com
FB and IG = @raindragonstudio.com
Let me tell you something about the way most people think they’re supposed to buy art.
They think there’s a gallery somewhere — white walls, good lighting, a person behind a desk who clearly knows more than they do — and that someday, when they have enough money and enough confidence and enough of whatever it takes to belong in a room like that, they’ll walk in and buy something.
That day, for a lot of people, never comes.
Here’s what nobody tells you: some of the most joyful, meaningful, and genuinely personal art collecting happens not in galleries — but under a canopy at a farmers market on a Wednesday morning. Or a Saturday. Wherever your market is.
And market season in Oregon is officially here.
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It Starts with Something Stopping You |
You’re there for the tomatoes. Maybe the kettle corn. You’re not thinking about art at all — and then something catches your eye from ten feet away and you slow down without meaning to.
That’s it. That’s the moment. That’s how most people buy their first piece of original art — not with a plan, not with a budget, not with a carefully researched aesthetic framework. With a feeling they didn’t see coming.
The farmers market is extraordinary for this. There’s no pressure, no mystique, no sense that you need to know the right things to say or have the right kind of home to put it in. The work is right there — you can get close to it, pick it up, turn it over, ask the person who made it what they were thinking when they made it. And that person will almost always tell you something that makes you love it more.
That’s not an experience you can get anywhere else.
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You’re Buying Something Nobody Else Has |
This is the part worth understanding if you’ve never bought original art before: every single piece at a market booth is one of a kind. Or close to it.
That hand-thrown ceramic mug, that small oil painting of the dunes, that felted wool wall piece in the colors that match your living room better than anything you’ve ever seen in a store — nobody else has that. It wasn’t made by a machine in a factory and reproduced ten thousand times. It was made by a human being, by hand, with intention. It exists in the world because that person decided to make it.
When you bring it home, it brings that with it. The story, the maker, the moment you found it at a market between the bread stand and the flower farmer. That’s not nothing. That’s actually the whole point of collecting art.
Artist Credit: Teri Fahrendorf is giving a workshop teaching Dudes & Demons is May 17 in Portland, OR https://www.raindragonstudio.com
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The story, the maker, the moment you found it — that’s not nothing. That’s actually the whole point. |
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But What If You Don’t Know What You’re Doing? |
You don’t need to.
Seriously. The only credential required for buying art at a farmers market is that you like it. You don’t need to know the artist’s exhibition history or understand the movement their work fits into or have an opinion about the medium. You need to feel something when you look at it. That’s the entire requirement.
The price will be on it — and farmers market prices are almost always significantly lower than gallery prices for comparable work, because the artist is selling directly and the overhead is a canopy and a folding table. A piece of original art that would sell in a gallery for several hundred dollars might be $60 or $80 at a market. Not because it’s worth less — because the economics are different.
And if you want to know more, just ask. Ask what it’s made of. Ask how long it took. Ask if they have more work somewhere, whether they have an email list, whether they’ll be back next week. Artists at markets love talking about their work. Most of them got into this because they wanted to connect with people — and you, standing there asking questions, are exactly that.
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The Beautiful Thing About Starting Small |
Every collection starts with one piece. Every collector was once someone who had never bought original art before and then one day did.
There is no minimum. There is no threshold of taste or wealth or sophistication you have to cross before you’re allowed to own something a human being made with their hands. A $45 set of hand-thrown espresso cups is a collection. A small watercolor you bought because it looked exactly like the view from your grandmother’s kitchen window is a collection. It counts. It’s real.
And once you’ve done it once — once you’ve had that conversation with the maker, taken something home, put it somewhere you see it every day — you understand why people keep doing it. It changes the way a room feels. It changes the way you feel in the room.
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What to Do This Week |
Oregon farmers markets are opening all over the state right now. Find yours. Go. Walk slowly past the art booths. Let something stop you.
If something does — and something probably will — talk to the person who made it. Ask your questions. If you love it and it’s in your budget, bring it home.
You just started a collection.
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What’s the first piece of original art you ever bought — or the one you’ve had your eye on? Tell us. We actually want to know. |
~Nicole Graham
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ABOUT ON VIEW On View is published by Nicart Art Agency — connecting collectors, art lovers, and curious newcomers with the artists and galleries of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. |
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