THE PORTFOLIO

When it comes to buying art most expects will tell you that the first criteria is to make sure that it is something you like. For myself I want to know if it is firstly a good investment and then I'll think about the other criteria later. Why settle for something that just looks good when if you work a bit harder you can find art that is also affordable and a good investment as well?

Personally I like art that makes me think. You will not find any Gum tree paintings in my home!

When I am not buying shares I also like to buy art. I call this diversifying the portfolio.

ONE THOUSAND PAINTINGS

I first started swapping emails with Sala in June last year after he had sold about 500 paintings. It was quickly clear that we came up with the ideas for our artwork independently and from different influences. We also wanted to achieve different things with our artwork.

From the amount of publicity Sala is getting for One Thousand Paintings I knew that they would be a good investment. Initially I bought three. One to keep, one to give to my sister as a present and one to sell later on to get my money back. On the secondary market I also bought the number “6” for $1000 as an investment. I had seen my own single digit paintings appreciate in value significantly and I again thought that this would be a good investment although artistically I think the three digit paintings are more interesting to look at.

I would recommend taking a close look at Sala's work because I have no doubts that in the future One Thousand Paintings will be showing up at Sotheby's and Christie's auctions.

PLACE OF PLACES

If you type H.R. Fricker into Google you will see that a lot comes up. Fricker was famous in the 80's for his mail art and networking. I got a bit of inside information about the launch Fricker's first internet project "Place of Places" and I made sure that I was the first to order a block of 16 Places.

Fricker is going to hate seeing this photo because I was meant to hang the artwork up and photograph it in my lounge room. Instead I have kept it packed up and locked away. Maybe I need to buy another set to display?