Artist Portfolio: How to Build One Galleries Actually Open

Your artist portfolio will get tested on a night you didn't plan for. It's a Thursday opening on Gertrude Street in Fitzroy; you've got a plastic cup of red in one hand, and a gallery director you've wanted to meet for two years says, "So what are you working on? Show me." Phone out. Dog. Dog again. A screenshot of a parking fine from Yarra Council. Forty photos of the same painting because you couldn't get the glare off it. Somewhere around photo twenty-six, she spots someone over your shoulder, and that's that.

We hear some version of this from artists all the time, and the annoying part is that the work was good. It just wasn't findable. So this post is about sorting that out before the next opening: which pieces go in, how many, in what order, and where the thing should live so you can get to it in ten seconds flat.

Key takeaways

• An artist portfolio is a short selection made for one audience. Your full back catalogue belongs on your website.

• Somewhere between ten and twenty recent pieces is plenty. Fifteen is a good number to aim at.

• Strongest piece first, second strongest last.

• A sharp, evenly lit phone photo beats a fancy layout.

• You'll want more than one version (gallery, prize, collector) and at least one of them on your phone.

What an artist portfolio is, and what it isn't

Your website is the shed. Everything's in there, including that series from 2017 you'd rather nobody asked about. An artist portfolio is what you load onto the ute for one job. Smaller. Chosen. Going to one address.

That matters because of who's looking. A gallery director deciding whether to take you on isn't going to wade through eight years of experiments to work out what you do now. She wants one body of work, and she wants to know within a minute whether it would sit well on her walls. (No website yet? We've written about why an artist website is worth having, and it's a separate job from this one.)

What to put in your artist portfolio

Not a lot, which surprises people.

• The work itself. Ten to twenty pieces, recent and finished, that look like they came out of the same studio.

• The boring line under each image. Title, medium, size in centimetres, year. Price too, if a buyer's going to see it.

• A bio you could read out in one breath. Who you are and where you work, in three or four sentences.

• An artist statement. One paragraph. What you make and why, in words your aunty would follow.

• A handful of CV highlights. The shows, prizes and collections that matter most. Leave the full list on your website.

• How to reach you. Email and one link, somewhere obvious.

If the statement is the bit you've been putting off, you're in good company. Our guide on how to describe your artwork was written for that exact Sunday night.

How many pieces is enough?

Fifteen, give or take. Go as low as ten if the work is large or the series is tight, and don't go past twenty.

People remember the weakest thing you showed them, so every "maybe" piece you leave in costs you. We've never once heard of a gallery knocking an artist back for not sending enough. A lean artist portfolio also tells them you can edit your own work, and that's something galleries care about more than most artists realise.

Can't choose? Put everything on the studio floor, or the lounge room floor if that's where the light is, and stand back. Does it look like one person made it over a couple of years? Pull out anything that doesn't. What's left is usually your portfolio. For a sense of how a focused body of work reads, have a look at this post on new Australian flora ceramics from Kiama.

Put them in the right order.

First image, best piece. People decide quickly, usually within the first three, so there's no point saving the good one for later. Your best and your favourite aren't always the same painting, by the way, and it's the best one that goes first.

After that, keep related works side by side so there's something to follow, and put your second-best piece last. If you've got two or three series in there, don't mix them up to look varied. It only makes the whole lot harder to read.

Photos make or break it.

Nobody can see past a bad photo. The painting might be the best thing you've made, but if it's dim, crooked, and has a window reflected in it, that's what they're looking at.

The good news is you don't need gear. The Art Gallery of Western Australia tells artists as much in its photography tips for submissions: a phone camera is fine, provided the light is bright and even and you haven't got a window behind the work.

Our light is the tricky part. Midday sun in most of Australia is brutal and will blow out anything pale, so:

1. Shoot in open shade. A verandah or carport does the job.

2. Keep the phone square to the work, or the edges will lean.

3. For 3D pieces, put a plain wall or a big sheet of card behind them.

4. Glass, glaze, and varnish all throw glare. Move around until it's gone.

5. Crop in tight. The easel and the bin don't need to be in it.

Tip: Read the gallery's submissions page before your artist portfolio goes anywhere near their inbox. A lot of Australian galleries only look at new artists at set times of the year, and some don't take unsolicited submissions at all. It takes five minutes, and it saves you sending good work into a void.

One portfolio doesn't suit everyone.

A gallery in Paddington, a collector in Fremantle and the judges of a regional art prize are all after different things, so sending them the same fifteen images doesn't make much sense.

For a gallery, send one recent body of work that hangs together, with your statement and CV highlights. For a prize or a grant, forget what you'd like to show and give them exactly what the entry form asks for, in their order and their file format. A collector should only ever see what's available, with prices on it, because there's nothing worse than someone falling for a piece that sold last month. And if an interior designer or stylist gets in touch, they'll mostly want to know sizes and colours, so group the work that way and put the dimensions where they can't miss them.

Getting taken on by a gallery is the start of a working relationship, and NAVA's guide to working with galleries spells out what each side can fairly expect. When your first pieces go out the door, our post on consigning artwork to a gallery covers the paperwork.

PDF or link: which format should you send?

Whatever they ask for. If the submissions page says PDF, send a PDF, even if you think your online version looks better.

If nobody's specified, we'd go with a link. It opens on any phone, it can't bounce for being too large, and if you spot a typo at 11 pm or a piece sells the next day, you can fix it without anyone knowing. PDFs still have their place, mostly for prize entries, grant applications, and people who like to file things.

Making a PDF? One artwork per page with its details underneath. Keep the file under 10 MB or thereabouts so it gets through email. Put your own name in the file name (Sam-Nguyen-Portfolio-2026.pdf, that kind of thing) so it doesn't end up as "portfolio-final-v3" in someone's downloads. Then open it on your phone before you send it, since that's probably where they'll read it.

Keep your artist portfolio in your pocket.

Think about where you've been asked to show your work. An opening. Your stall at Salamanca Market. A flat white with a mate's sister who's fitting out a restaurant in Brunswick and needs something for the back wall. None of those came with notice, and a PDF on the laptop at home is no help at any of them.

This is why ArtFlow has a mobile app. You log in, tap through to your artworks, flick through your portfolios, and bring up any piece with its size, medium, price, and whether it's still available. So when someone asks, you've got an answer, and you look like the organised sort of artist. Which, at that point, you are.

Building one without starting from scratch

If your work is already catalogued, most of your artist portfolio is done. In ArtFlow, you tick the pieces you want, choose a layout, and send one link. Handy for a submission or a studio visit. Even handier for the collector who buys one piece and says, "What else have you got?"

Nothing goes public unless you choose that. A portfolio can stay private and be shared by link; it can be made for one gallery only, or it can be published for anyone to find. You get three portfolios on the free tier, so that's a gallery version, a collector version and one to play with. The features page and the pricing page have the rest.

Mistakes that get portfolios closed

A few things will get an artist portfolio closed in under ten seconds, and they're all easy to avoid.

Too much work is the big one. Thirty pieces feels thorough when you're putting it together and endless to the person opening it. Old work is next: if it's four years old and looks nothing like what you make now, it's only confusing people. Missing details hurt more than you'd think as well, because a gallery can't do much with an image that has no size, medium, or year. And please click every link yourself before you send. A dead link is the easiest "no" a busy person will ever give.

Questions artists ask about portfolios.

• How many pieces should be in an artist portfolio? Ten to twenty, and fifteen suits most people. Recent work only, and nothing you'd feel you had to explain.

• Should I include prices? Yes, if it's going to a collector or buyer. For a gallery submission, leave them off unless they've asked, because pricing is a conversation they'll want to have with you.

• Do I need a printed portfolio? Not often. Most galleries would rather get a link or a PDF, and in person a phone or tablet does the job.

• How often should I update it? Each time you finish a body of work you're proud of. Failing that, twice a year. When something new goes in, something older should come out.

• What's the difference between an artist portfolio and a website? The website has everything and is open to anyone who finds it. The portfolio is a short selection you've chosen for one person or one purpose.

The short version

Pick your best fifteen. Put the strongest first and the next strongest last. Photograph them in decent shade, add the details, write a few plain sentences about yourself, and keep it all on your phone. That's an artist portfolio a gallery will open. If you'd like somewhere to build it, start a free ArtFlow account and have a go tonight.