Who Sources the Art: What Going Direct to a Working Studio Actually Changes
Last updated: September 25, 2026
In short: Going direct to a working artist removes one layer of markup and one layer of scheduling risk from a commercial art package. A curator or gallery roster earns its fee when a firm has no artist network of its own and needs one assembled fast. When the wall count is known and the schedule is tight, a direct relationship usually costs less, moves faster, and keeps revisions open — because the person who would make the change is the person who answers.
Why does anyone use a curator or a gallery roster in the first place?
Because the network is the product. A design firm that has never placed art at scale is being asked to find, vet, price, insure, crate and install forty pieces on a construction schedule, and a curator does that for a living. Healthcare Design magazine's own guidance on sourcing art for a clinical project makes the trade plainly: a curator helps locate artists when nobody on staff already has that network, and a gallery layer usually carries a markup on top of the artist's price.
That is a real service and it is worth paying for on the right project. The question is what happens when the firm already knows what it wants.
What does the extra layer actually cost, beyond the markup?
Time, mostly — and the industry has spent a year learning exactly how expensive time is.
Reporting on the design business after twelve months of tariff disruption found the real cost was rarely the percentage. It was the hours. "It's not necessarily that the higher costs have been the problem; it really is cash flow," said Winn Galloway, who runs the California furniture brand Le Maé with his wife. Mallory Solomon, co-founder and CEO of the rug brand Salam Hello, described the same drag in shipping terms: "It has created a lot of unnecessary work on our end, along with delays for customers, which has been incredibly frustrating." Cara Barde, president of Crow Canyon Home, put the arithmetic of a disrupted supply chain in one line: "It changes the math on the entire business."
Art is not furniture, but the structure is identical. Every party standing between the wall and the person holding the brush is one more calendar to synchronise and one more inbox where a revision goes to wait.
How does a direct relationship change the schedule?
It collapses the chain to one calendar.
My studio works direct — to collectors, and to designers, architects, art consultants and hospitality clients. There is no gallery representation between the work and the room. A commission starts with a conversation, a deposit holds the slot, and then I paint two options simultaneously, which is the part most people have never been offered. First reveal, first revision round, second and final revision round. The work ships rolled to a framer local to the client, gets stretched fresh on arrival, and is hand-delivered ready to hang. Deposit to delivery runs about four weeks, depending on the studio schedule.
Four weeks is not a promise a chain can make. It is a promise one calendar can make.
Does a designer lose control by cutting out the middle layer?
The opposite, in practice — because the loss of control designers actually fear is the loss of the revision.
Lindsay Olson, founder of the Newport Beach studio Lulu Designs, described how she now handles sourcing uncertainty with clients: "I always say when I present: 'This piece is from [this country] and it will take longer,' or 'It's coming from [this country] so there'll be a tariff or a tax,' because I don't want a client to fall in love with something that I can't get expeditiously or without an outrageous price tag. I'm not going to bury the lede." (The bracketed insertions are the publication's.)
That is a designer managing the gap between what a client wants and what the supply chain will allow. A direct commission narrows the gap instead of managing it. When a client falls in love with a direction at first reveal, the person who can act on it is already on the phone.
Is domestic sourcing the same argument as direct sourcing?
Related, and worth separating.
Gat Caperton, who owns the West Virginia furniture brand Gat Creek, has watched American makers get a look they had not had in years — and he is clear-eyed about why some of it arrived: "Someone that comes to us because they want to avoid high tariffs are highly likely to be the same people who run away from us when tariffs go down."
He is right, and the same caution applies to art. A studio chosen because a number moved is a studio abandoned when the number moves back. The durable reason to work directly with a working painter is structural, not economic: the maker is reachable, the schedule is knowable, and the piece is still in flux until the room says it isn't.
And the budget pressure is real regardless of who sources the work. Portland designer Kevin Twitty put the squeeze precisely: "[Clients are] still spending the same amount as they were before, so what that does is it shrinks our projects or updates our scope." (Bracketed insertion is the publication's.) A project with a fixed number and rising costs has to find the savings somewhere. One fewer layer between the wall and the studio is a legitimate place to find it.
Does a studio outside New York change how the work is read?
Less than it used to, and the shift is documented from inside the profession.
The painter and educator Roland Reiss, in his oral history for the Archives of American Art, described the structural change he had watched across his career: "Los Angeles and other centers have come of age and it is possible to have a full-blown career outside of New York." In the same conversation he named the older pull honestly — "Artists gravitate to the centers of action in their fields" — and conceded that New York names still command bigger reputations and bigger prices.
Both things are true at once, and the second one is the useful one for a designer. A studio in Nashville is not a compromise on quality; it is a different cost structure and a different phone number. Reiss also said something that has aged well for anyone running a practice as a business: "It's not just about making work."
What does a direct studio actually carry for a commercial project?
Concretely: original work only, calibrated to the rooms each piece goes into. Twenty years in oil and mixed media. Trade pricing for verified designers and firms. Transparent-background PNGs and forwardable tear sheets for presentations. Multiple pre-ship videos of every finished work. Float framing on request. Architectural and multi-panel work built across stretched canvas tiles that reassemble seamlessly on site, with no upper size limit — the format lobbies and atriums actually need.
The placements behind that are real and checkable: 33 originals across the Conrad Nashville, interiors by Champalimaud Design, art placement by consultant Tammy Parmentier. Five originals at Peabody Union. Original paintings at the Frist Clinic and in the Centennial Medical Center Oncology Medical Office Building at City View Medical Plaza (Sarah Cannon Research Institute), architecture and design by Gresham Smith, interior design by Elisha Howell. Work at Blackberry Mountain and Albion in the Gulch, and a licensed reproduction in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt Nashville.
Every one of those was sourced without a gallery between the studio and the room.
Frequently asked questions
Is it cheaper to commission art directly from an artist than to buy through a gallery?
Usually, yes — a gallery or curator layer typically adds a markup on top of the artist's price, and going direct also removes a shipping and handling step. The saving is real but it is not the main reason to do it; the schedule and the revision access matter more on a deadline-driven project.
How long does a commissioned original painting take?
About four weeks from deposit to delivery in my studio, depending on the current schedule. That window includes two simultaneously painted options, a first reveal, and two revision rounds.
Do you work with interior designers and art consultants directly?
Yes. The studio sells direct to collectors and to the trade — designers, architects, art consultants and hospitality clients — with 20% trade pricing for verified designers and firms, and no gallery representation in between.
Can original paintings work in a healthcare or clinical space?
Yes, and there is a real record of it — original work is installed at the Frist Clinic and in the Centennial Medical Center Oncology Medical Office Building at City View Medical Plaza, with architecture and design by Gresham Smith.
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