Artists and gallery owners offer advice on creating—and selling—location-specific artwork.
By Daniel Grant
An old adage states that all politics is local. Perhaps all art is, too. Walter Gonske, of Taos, N.M., found that out when he placed his paintings of the American Southwest in galleries in California and Hilton Head, S.C. There were no sales. After six months, the gallery on Hilton Head recommended that Gonske come on out and paint some South Carolina scenery.
Eventually, a few paintings Gonske had done of the California coast, which included palm trees and commercial fishing boats, sold in the Hilton Head gallery, but no Southwest scenes. All of this led him to the conclusion that artworks sell best when they depict imagery that has associations with the area where the gallery is located; paintings of New Mexico and Colorado sell in New Mexico and Colorado, respectively.
Fortunately, they sell extremely well in Santa Fe, N.M., and Vail, Colo., where tourists flock and the well-to-do buy second homes. When out-of-towners visit, they often buy art to remind them of the places they’ve seen. Gonske creates about 100 paintings per year—half of them scenes of Santa Fe in summer, the other half scenes of Vail in winter—and sells most of them.
The sales come at somewhat of a cost, however. “I’m not free to just paint at my own pace,” Gonske says. “I prefer working on large canvases because I can get lost in my work and forget the time, but then one of my dealers calls wanting a certain number of paintings by a certain date, so I have to drop everything to paint a bunch of smaller works.”
Tourist Art Buyers
Vacationers and second-home owners are a major source of collecting for a great many artists who paint or sculpt regional scenes. People can get too lost in the busyness of their day-to-day lives to make time for looking at art, but when they’re on vacation, that changes. Buying art becomes a pleasant, fun activity in which they might not engage otherwise. “We have clients from all over the country,” says Arthur Rogers, a gallery owner in New Orleans. “Tourists—the lifeblood of this city—represent the largest percentage of the gallery’s buyers. There aren’t many collectors in New Orleans who can spend at a high level. If you’re on a holiday, on the other hand, you’ll be a bit more willing to break your own rules.”
Sometimes, local leaders might provide a helping hand to encourage out-of-towners to visit the local art scene. The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, for instance, sets up gallery tours for convention goers and their guests, busing people into the gallery-rich Union Square district. According to one area gallery director, roughly half of its sales are made to tourists and those in town for conventions.
There isn’t one style or subject matter that most interests travelers, but generally, representational art—works that convey the spirit of a place—is a solid approach. Covington, La.-based artist Shirley Rabe Masinter paints scenes of old cemeteries and once-grand New Orleans neighborhoods. “They have an ‘old world’ feeling,” she says, “and seem very exotic to people from other parts of the country.”
On the other hand, Ed Dwight, a sculptor in Denver—whose work features noted jazz musicians through a negative-and-positive-space mix of head, horn and hands—is also popular among New Orleans visitors who associate the city with its musical legacy. “People travel to New Orleans to be transported,” he says. “They get enthusiastic, drink some of that crazy juice down there and want to bring something home with them that reflects their experience. Buying my work is an extension of their trip.”
Various tourist destinations have their own associations, which the most sought-after artwork tends to capture. “My art reflects a lifestyle people have come out here to enjoy,” says Linda Loeschen, of Basalt, Colo., a painter of Southwestern landscapes. “It’s the outdoors, the natural life, the freedom of a cowboy.” Originally from New Jersey, Loeschen moved to Colorado in the early 1970s. “The same thing brought me here—that feeling of being alive, the appeal of indulging in nature,” she notes, adding that her paintings “offer an escape” for buyers who may be going home to busy cities.
Second-Home Art Buyers
Second-home owners also make up a large percentage of gallery art sales, and these buyers often go to great lengths to ensure that the artworks they purchase for their second homes mirror the particular place. Some even go so far as commissioning artists to paint a specific scene. “My buyers don’t want scenes of Venice; they want something that says ‘Cape Cod,’ ” says Sue Carstenson, the former owner of Birdsie-on-the-Cape, a gallery in Osterville, Mass., where three-quarters of sales were made to second-home owners or their guests.
Although realism is always popular, some buyers prefer whimsical work that’s done in a more naive style. “They’ve bought this house in order to have fun, so they want fun art hanging in it,” says Carstenson. She points out, however, that most buyers’ maximum purchase price for second-home artworks will be significantly lower than what they’re willing to spend on art for their primary residence. “There’s a ceiling of around $5,000 at the top end,” she says. “Few people are going to spend $25,000 on a piece of artwork for
a summer home.”
Carstenson keeps close tabs on her buyers and frequently passes on information about what does and doesn’t sell to the artists whose work she represents. “Sue tells me that people don’t like orange-y sunsets,” says Neil McAuliffe, a year-round Cape Cod resident and the gallery’s top-selling artist. “She also tells me not to do things that are yellow-y, because people can’t match it with their decor. The main colors should always be pink, green and blue—and always include elements like water, sky and hydrangeas.”
Carstenson is quick to confirm: “Blue and rose are colors that always sell,” she says. “Put in beachy roses, it’ll go; put in hydrangeas, it’ll go.”
Fresh Perspectives
There will always be collectors who seek the unusual and unfound, of course. Artist Alan Flattmann (1946–2025), of Covington, La., regularly traveled to New Orleans to find new angles and perspectives in the interiors and exteriors of restaurants and bars at different times of the day. Dramatically lit subjects and rainy days with a lot of reflections figured into his dynamic compositions, which contributed to his celebrated career.
Success in reaching a particular market, however, also has the potential of placing artists in a bind: Selling principally to nonresidents, they often don’t receive direct feedback on their work from collectors, only finding out what sells from dealers. Those dealers may want more of the same, which can hinder an evolving artistic vision—and low prices may require artists to be prolific, which can sometimes mean working from a formula.
Many artists may also fear they’ll lose sales if they lean into new subjects. McAuliffe, for example, traveled to Maine’s Acadia National Park, where he painted several scenes, but Carstenson was less than enthusiastic about selling them in her Cape Cod gallery, telling him that the pieces were better suited for Acadia galleries to sell. It can be a quandary for artists, figuring out where to put their focus, but it’s a decision that can be revisited. “I look forward to branching out,” McAuliffe says, “but for now I’m just doing what people want.”
Daniel Grant is the author of The Business of Being an Artist.
This article appears in the 2026 May/June issue of Artists Magazine.
