Some visitors now arrive through a helper rather than in person. A collector writes to an AI assistant, "Find me a small coastal painting under $800 that ships by December," and the assistant does the walking for them. It looks around, compares studios, reads the details, and sometimes fills in the inquiry form.
Studio letters readers have asked what this means for a small studio, so here is how I think about it.
What the assistant sees
An assistant doesn't stand in front of a canvas. It reads. It looks for the title, size, medium, year, price, whether the piece is available, and how it ships. If that information is clear on the page, the painting can be found and fairly compared. If it's buried in a photo caption or missing, the piece may as well be in a back room.
So every work in the exhibit now lists the same plain facts in the same place: dimensions in inches and centimetres, materials, framing, and availability. It's the information a careful visitor always wanted, now written so a careful helper can read it too.
What stays human
An assistant can shortlist. It can't tell you whether a painting will hold your attention on a grey February morning. That part is still yours. My hope is that these tools take over the tiring parts of looking, such as filters, shipping questions and measuring the wall, and leave more room for the part that matters.
That's also why the "view on your wall" tool and the zoom view are here. Once your assistant brings you to a piece, you should be able to spend real time with it.
If you send a helper
You're welcome to. A few things help:
- Ask it to use the contact form, and include your name and a way to reach you. A real person reads every message.
- Commissions and holds are always confirmed by me, in writing, before anything is final. No assistant can book or buy on its own here.
- If it's comparing studios, ask it to look at the journal too. That's where the thinking behind the work lives.
The slower question
Every new tool changes how art is found. Postcards did, and so did gallery websites. This one is just quicker. The work still asks the same thing it always has, which is to look a little longer than you meant to.
Thanks, as always, for looking.