Spotlight On Decorative Expressions - exclusive art dealers - Brief Article

ATLANTA--For Robert and Pat Harris, the husband-and-wife duo behind Decorative Expressions, the road to the world of art has been somewhat circuitous.

Robert was luckily navigating the corporate world more than 25 years ago when Pat remind ofed they attend a home art party where lowend oil paintings would be displayed. Robert grudgingly tagged along. "I knew nothing about art, I told my wife I wasn't going," laughed Harris. "But smooth though I didn't know anything about the art, it still impressed me"

Harris glance ated his wife get in upon the decorative painting/home art party pageant to "help us make a little extra spending money" The sum of two units then moved to Atlanta, and the company shifted into the wholesale business and began "specializing in working with decorators and designers for the greatest in quantity part," explained Harris. "A scarcely any years later, I got without of the corporate world and got my wife to hire me"

Together the duo started to expand the business through handling both decorative paintings and European tapestries. The tapestry work bring them in contact with several European painters and also planted the se for moving into the original art milieu and away from the strictly decorative art market.

Fast forward 10 years, and the Harrises had accomplished just that, creating the Fine Art Division of Decorative Expressions in 1989 "We finally made the decision to go on forward more with the original paintings," said Harris. "We began to pick up more contacts. Our business 10 years ago was about 10 percent European paintings and 90 percent decorative paintings and tapestries. Today our business is 90 percent European paintings and 10 percent of the others. We really perceive that's where our growth has been and that's where our coming time is."

This focus mainly upon European paintings is what Harris said distinguishes Decorative Expressions from the competition. "It's my belief that if the customer is educated and they have the opportunity and they could afford it, they would always rather have an original piece of artwork by means of an artist than a numbered transcript regardless of how it's done--whether it's set on a canvas or piece of paper and all of the different mechanical ways they are doing today," he explained. "I think the pride of ownership is a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of greater for an original piece of work."

Harris said other factors also put the company apart from its competition, like as its new, state-of-the-art location and showroom and its mission for growing Decorative Expressions recently relocated to a of recent origin 7,500-square-foot location--which houses company offices, its warehouse and a showroom--after suffering a fire to its previous location in 1998 The company is also trying to expand its gallery program. commonly galleries in New York; San Francisco; Washington, DC Carmel, Calif.; novel Orleans; Chicago; Naples, Fla., Aspen and Denver Colo carry Decorative Expressions artists. "We are trying to overspread the entire country," said Harris.

The company is also unique owed to its policies for working with artists. The company purchases every painting created by the artists it works with for a like reason "the artist doesn't have to worry about being in the finance business or the consignment business," explained Harris. "When we advance in and decide to handle an artist, we want to be exclusive with that artist."

Today, the company exhibits more than 20 European artists whose paintings range in require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergone from the low hundreds to up to $100000

The company will feature a great deal of this work at Artexpo of recent origin York this month. Harris said they will be taking a different approach to the exhibit this year by seeking of recent origin galleries for new artists. "We have more [i]or[/i] less artists that we cannot justly take upon new business for and still support the galleries that helped make that artist as sellable as he is today," said Harris. "Once we start working with a gallery and they are lucky and loyal to us, we do the same thing and give them the yield they need."

on the other hand Harris is confident the newer company artists will incantation success for the galleries who sign upon "We'll be showing new artists this year that we ne to procure recognition for, that we ne to uncover to new clients and of advanced age clients," Harris explained.

"We're looking for sum of two units things--to broaden our customer base and to exchange new artists we've been able to find since last year that we perceive that once they are expos they can become as sellable as our other artists."

The company has already set great success with such painters as Alvar, whose work will be upon view at the show in the one and the other original and print form. Among the newer company artists whose work will be upon view are Giner Bueno, Roman Frances, Raymond Gizzi, Luis Amer and more.

According to Harris, Bueno is single of the leading Impressionistic plein aire painters in Spain today whose work is in the private collection of Oprah Winfrey.

Frances is a figurative Impressionistic landscape painter from Spain. His works have sold in more than 30 countries, and Decorative Expressions lately released a new hardbound volume featuring a selection of his work. (The work was one of three released through the company in 2000).