How To Create A Professional Artist Website

Table of contents

We are pleased to present a definitive, industry-approved tutorial on creating a professional artist website that will increase your chances for success in the art world. Step by step, we will walk you through everything you need to know about websites for artists today and show you how you can create your website today, efficiently and successfully, going for top quality at the best price—possibly in less than just one hour of your time. Too good to be true? Not at all.

As a contemporary art platform and art gallery in close dialogue with numerous successful artists, for this article, we have combined our experience with thorough research prior to writing this article, analyzing countless websites by successful emerging and mid-career (with established artists, things are slightly different because everything goes through their galleries, estates, or foundations) of all ages and different geolocations. By doing so, we have identified the unwritten rules and archetypical structure for artist websites. We’ll explain what galleries and collectors are looking for and what you absolutely must avoid, but nobody is telling you.

An artist’s website is the crucial link between you and the professional art world. It functions as an online business card and makes your professional resume and portfolio publicly available for those who have gathered interest in your work. As a result, the artist’s website is where the gallery director, collector, or curator will decide whether or not to work with you. If you have set up your website correctly—as instructed in this article—your chances will be optimal for success. Whereas if you are unaware of the art world’s unwritten rules regarding artist websites, they will not take you seriously and instantly lose interest.

So your artist website makes a difference, if not the difference, between a first success and the start of a prosperous career or remaining under the radar for perpetuity. So let’s dissect and discuss those notorious unwritten rules, after which we can apply them to create your industry-approved website today and show you how. Here comes!

1. Understanding the Unwritten Rules and Archetypical Structure for Artist Websites

Before we start creating our artist website, we must understand what we have to create. For this chapter and throughout the years, we have visited and analyzed hundreds of artist websites by successful artists in different phases of their careers and places worldwide. Yet, all these ‘serious’ and professional artists have the same structure, pages, and look. A coincidence? Not at all.

These websites align with the art world’s expectations of your website’s appearance and what information it should communicate. Very similar to the websites of established art galleries, a few must-have pages form the industry-approved archetypical structure for websites. If you follow this structure, the seasoned gallery director, critic, or collector will recognize this structure and conclude you know what you’re doing—being a “serious artist,” “art world insider,” or simply having a professional approach to your artistic practice and profile.

This also implies that as soon as you have something on your website that does not align with this structure and expectations, you will be seen as unprofessional, an outsider, and not a serious artist they want to work with or collect. As a result, we highly recommend that you follow this structure and tutorial closely because every page or action not included in this tutorial is an unnecessary risk and a potential dealbreaker. For your convenience, we have listed some of the most common mistakes to avoid later in this chapter.

So let’s start and discuss the expected overall look and feeling for artist websites, the three must-have pages, some possible—but not necessary—pages one could add, and what to avoid at all times.

1.1 The Overall Look, Design & Feeling

Sometimes, it is expected of artists to show their personality and to be creative—for instance, with interviews or simply in their works—and there are times when it is expected of the artist to be formal, professional, and a little bit elusive. The latter is the desired behavior and attitude regarding your artist’s website’s overall look, design, and feeling.

Artist websites have a minimal and high-end design characteristic of the art world. Less is more, using a simple black or dark grey font—think of popular sans-serif fonts such as Helvetica Neue and Arial, or serif fonts such as Garamond and Times New Roman—on a plain white background. If you look at the websites of established art galleries and successful emerging and mid-career artists, they all go for this minimal and professional style and design.

An original design can sometimes work—if you have a graphic designer who understands the subtle differences between what is acceptable and what is not. However, it is always a risk. So instead of going for crazy designs, or trying to look like a big company or platform, act as if you aren’t trying at all, which is not as easy as it sounds. But no worries, we will assist you further in designing your website in our next chapter.

E.g.: The design of the artist website of Edith Dekyndt (2023) — Studio Edith Dekyndt ©

1.2 Three Must-Have Pages

In the introduction, we mentioned an artist website is your publicly accessible portfolio and resume, as well as an online business card. This results in the three must-have pages for artist websites: a home/works page with a selection of works as your portfolio, an about/bio/info/cv page with your artist resume, and a contact page.

The selected works page—often the website’s homepage—consists of a reasoned and representative selection of the artist’s best artworks and installation views. Additional information includes the metadata of the artworks (title, year, medium/surface, dimensions), or, in case of an installation view, you can specify the venue and photo credits.

Next, we have your about/bio/info/cv page. The most important thing for this page is to share your professional artist resume communicating the required factual information in bullet points, such as year and location of birth, education, exhibition history, publications, collections, and more. [learn more about how you can set up your artist resume correctly here] You could also add a short and descriptive biographic text written in the third person or by an art critic. If you do not have a lot of experience yet, make sure to read our article on how to improve your artist resume with no experience next.

To conclude, we have the contact page—often combined with the about/cv page to reduce the number of pages even more and simplify the website structure. Here you can mention your email address, which is arguably more professional and less “corporate” than a contact form, and offer the visitor the opportunity to join your mailing list and receive updates on any upcoming exhibitions. In addition, you could add your studio address and the contact information of the galleries representing you. This will elevate your credibility as an artist and the trust and spirit of your galleries. Win-win!

E.g.: The websites of Stan Van Steendam, Minh Dung Vu, and Johnny Abrahams and the recurring three must-have pages for artist websites.

1.3 Optional Pages

If you have the three must-have pages on your website, you’re all set and can publish your website. However, if you would like to add more information—especially when you are more established—here are some pages that are also industry-accepted in the art world.

You could consider creating a page with an overview of all the texts and publications about your work as soon as there is a significant bibliography about your work. Think of press releases, magazine features, online interviews, and more. Try to present them as formally and professionally as possible using text only and including hyperlinks to an online pdf or webpage of the publication or text in question.

Another possible page is an overview of your monographic, printed publications. Here you can add a picture of the book, including the metadata of the book (year, publisher, author(s), designer(s), pages, etc.) and where to find or purchase them.

To conclude, you could also add a news/projects/exhibitions page, communicating your past, current, and upcoming shows and projects. Please note, once again, this page should remain as formal as possible. Do not use too many images, long descriptions, blog-like text, or additional pages.

We discuss the optional pages more thoroughly in our article All Pages You Need for a Professional Artist Website.

E.g.: The websites of Hans Op de Beeck, Pieter Vermeersch, and Justin Mortimer and the recurring possible additional pages for artist websites.

1.4 Common Mistakes with Artist Websites

We conclude this chapter with some common mistakes artists make when setting up their artist websites that are highly frowned upon in the professional art world. Things that at first seem to make sense but are, in fact, against the aforementioned unwritten rules. The seasoned gallery director or collector will roll their eyes before categorizing you as an unprofessional hobbyist, instantly making your credibility as an artist collapse. This might seem harsh, but it is the honest truth. To be forewarned is to have four arms…

First and foremost, when working on your online artist portfolio on the ‘selected works’ page, try not to overwhelm the website visitor by showing too many artworks. Kill your darlings and offer a brief but powerful selection, leaving them longing for more. Please don’t write additional texts with every artwork. Only in some cases can you add a curatorial text, press release, or describe a specific series. Refrain from overcomplicating how you organize your work. Organize them per series, per medium, or chronologically, and make sure you can fit everything into a single webpage so your website structure remains clear and professional.

Please don’t mention the availability or prices of the artwork. This is seen as too commercial, making the page look like a webshop instead of a portfolio. This naturally results in not having a webshop on your website, especially not a “merchandise” webshop. It comes across as very commercial and is frowned upon.

For now, don’t worry too much about sales. In the long run, you will have more sales without a webshop than with one. Trust us; the genuinely interested collector will email you for pricing and availability of your work, and by doing so, your artistic integrity will also remain intact. This is how online sales happen in the art world all the time; by email. Plus, this way, you also have their contact information which could lead to (more) potential sales in the future.

A common mistake on your bio/about/info/cv page is to talk too much about yourself, sharing a lengthy artist statement, most often written in the first person. In fact, you should refrain from talking about yourself in the first person on your website and even avoid talking or trying to sell yourself in general. For this reason, you also can not have a blog on your artist’s website. It is common for hobby artists or artists who are trying too hard desperately. And if you do opt for a text, keep it short and sweet and in the third person—preferably with the assistance of an art critic.

The same goes for the contact page; do not write in full sentences here, nor should you poach, lure or try to convince them to contact you for sales, commissions, or collaborations. Just share the required information, nothing more. Always use a professional email address on your website, such as [email protected] or [email protected]

This brings us to your website’s domain name, which should be www.namesurname.com or something very similar. Don’t invent brand names for your art or use unprofessional domain names such as www.beautifulpaintings.com, but use your name and surname. Because your persona, your actual name, is your brand in the art world. This is both practical and professional, and therefore it is expected. Also, you can avoid free hosting services in which the domain name mentions the website builder or shows ads for the website builder on the platform.

2. Selecting A Website Builder (Our Professional Recommendations)

For our article discussing the 4 Best Website Builders for Contemporary Artists, we have tested and analyzed twelve different website builders to create a shortlist of the four best picks for artists today. We ranked them from best to worst, with Squarespace as our first recommendation, followed by Wix, WordPress, and Artlogic.

In short, Artlogic is a bit too expensive, priced at $50 per month; creating a WordPress site will take a lot more time and expertise to set up your website correctly due to its steeper learning curve; Wix is a great pick in terms of price (16$/month) and the easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor. But with Squarespace, the quality, design, and overall feel of your website feels a bit more high-end for the same price and as easy to use as Wix, making Squarespace the very best website builder there is for artist websites today.

Considering the unwritten rules for artist websites in the art world, we don’t need to create a big online store, have online reservations, or build a large website. We need to create a clear, professionally designed, and high-end feeling website. With Squarespace, this is easy as it gets. Their templates are beautiful, their design editor and software engine is lauded by professional graphic designers, and the websites are as responsive and fast as it gets. Feel free to read the entire overview of the different website builders, encompassing their specs, strengths, and weaknesses, in our more extensive article here.

Plus, feel free to use our promo code CONTEMPORARY10 to get 10% off and to support this free tutorial. Now, let’s go to Squarespace using the following link navigating to a specific page where we are going to get started with building our website.

Go to Squarespace here

3. Building Your Artist Website — A Step-by-Step Guide

In this chapter, we will build and design our website using a specific Squarespace template and their easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor. Feel free to pause the video anytime during this tutorial while creating your website simultaneously in another tab. Good luck!

Here is the link to our starting point on Squarespace

4. Maintaining & Updating Your Artist’s Website

When it comes to maintaining your website and keeping it up to date, I am pleased to say an artist’s website has very low maintenance—especially when using a platform such as Squarespace. When your website builder is doing everything to keep your website happy and functional throughout the year, the only thing you’ll have to do from time to time is update some of the information on your website.

First and foremost, your artist resume. You should add it to your artist resume as soon as you have completed an exhibition—or even when it has just opened. The same goes for residencies, art contests, collections, publications, and more.

Next, you should try to keep your artist portfolio up to date. Here, I would not advise you to add brand-new artwork instantly to your website as soon as it is finished in your studio. You can take your time here and reflect on your work first or finish the entire series it belongs to. This all depends on what type of artist you are. A painter could update their portfolio once a year or every time a series is finished. In contrast, a project-based artist will probably have to wait until they finish a complete project—and possibly also after exhibiting it so it is adequately documented.

For instance, if you are an installation artist, keep your sketches, studio models, or digital renders private. Please wait until your work is shown and can be documented in the best possible environment with some installation views. And in general, if you have some new installation views from a new show that are very good, you can add them to your homepage or portfolio or replace the older, less high-end installation views to elevate the appearance of your level as an artist.

To conclude, please make sure your contact information and the information of your galleries are up to date. As a result, depending on your artistic activity and the number of exhibitions per year, you will only have to update your website a couple of times without making any considerable changes or adding too much new information or content.

Epilogue: Final Thoughts & Advice

To summarize, an artist’s website is actually straightforward to set up and maintain—if you have the proper knowledge and information at your disposal. The unwritten rules of the art world when it comes to artist websites expect your website to look a certain way, and only by following this structure and best practices will your website make a positive difference in your career.

In the art world, appearances are significant. People will value the quality of your art and your level as an artist based on what you see online and how it is presented. Doing so could make you look more professional or successful than you currently are, improving your chances for real new successes. Or not, when you do not pay attention to these rules and points of attention. As a result, it is essential to take matters into our hands and do those small things that ultimately make a difference, as presented in this tutorial.

Some artists will be successful with a website that is remotely alright or without a website at all, but please note that these cases do not mean that your website is irrelevant. In fact, they would arguably have more success if they had a professional website, and they are most often the exception, not the rule.

Further, by having your website online—which will be the first search result when people Google your name as an artist—you can control what they see, ensure they see your best work, and have the correct information available. This is beneficial for galleries that want to work with you, critics who wish to write about you, or collectors interested in acquiring one of your works.

When you become a more established artist, your website’s expectations shift slightly. You can focus more on the exhibitions, publications, and your galleries because the focal point on the web will have shifted to those aspects—instead of having to present a portfolio or resume that is publicly available elsewhere. In many cases, the established artists drop their websites, and the webpage on the websites of their galleries functions as their website—hence sharing the same information we mentioned throughout this article, so you don’t have to repeat or present it yourself anymore.

So, congratulations on your brand-new and industry-accepted artist website! You no longer need to worry about your website if you have to change anything and if you are doing things the right way. If you want to learn more about how to improve your overall profile as an artist and how to increase your chances in the art world, read our article How To Succeed as an Artist next, or our 6-step program How To Become A Successful Self-Taught Artist. Enjoy!

For 1-on-1 personalized advice, consider our advisory services for artists here.

Last Updated on October 1, 2024