The History of Artflow Pro

Practical tools for documenting, organising, and sharing your creative work

Artflow Pro was created for independent artists who want to keep their practice organised, documented, and ready to present. It helps visual artists manage their body of work, write clear descriptions, set and track pricing, and publish their portfolios across websites, social media, and sales platforms.

The platform started from a real-world frustration. Ceramic artist Frances Smith was preparing for an exhibition and found herself bogged down in admin: titles, images, pricing, paperwork. Instead of marking a creative achievement, it felt like a scramble to stay on top of scattered files and spreadsheets.

She turned to her husband, Peter Smith - a retired software CEO with a background in digital systems and media tools, and together they began building a better way to manage an artist's work.

Artflow Pro doesn't assume you're represented by a gallery. It's built to give you control, clarity, and confidence in managing your own creative business, but when opportunities come along, you'll be ready. The system makes it easy to share your portfolio, prepare proposals, and send professional documentation that galleries respect.

Solving the Business Side of Art

At its core, Artflow Pro is about helping artists focus on what they do best - while handling the complex, repetitive, and often neglected business side of creative work.

Artists can use the platform to catalogue their artworks, store multiple high-resolution images, and record all relevant details: from materials, features, sizes, pricing and information about their artwork series. The AI-powered description generator draws from this data, along with artist bios and statements, to suggest both shortform and longform descriptions that are easy to edit and publish.

Pricing is handled with flexibility and clarity, allowing for different retail, wholesale, and gallery commission scenarios. Artists can build and send tailored artwork proposals to galleries, then create consistent and professional delivery documentation when works are selected.

Every interaction - whether it's internal preparation, social media publishing, or gallery communication - is stored as part of a long-term, structured record of the artist's practice. Artflow Pro becomes the central hub from which their creative business is managed.

Built on Years of Software and Media Innovation

Peter Smith brings a unique depth of experience to the project. Over a 30-year career, he built and led a software development and digital media company with international offices and clients in fields ranging from education and finance to government and healthcare.

Prior to that, Peter worked as a film and television producer, director, writer, and cinematographer - earning awards across each category. He transitioned to interactive digital media in the early 1990s, collaborating with IBM, Toshiba, and NCR on early full-motion video systems.

Peter later developed Presentation Builder, a platform that was widely adopted by global firms in medical, IT, property, and investor relations sectors for digital sales communication. He followed this with m-cast, an innovative digital signage and content platform created in cooperation with Fujitsu, Wincor-Nixdorf, and Torex/XN, and deployed internationally across retail and enterprise venues.

That combination of creative insight and software architecture forms the foundation of Artflow Pro.

Grounded in the Life of a Working Artist

Frances Smith is a ceramic artist, designer, and educator with an extensive professional background in graphic design and television. Trained at the Sydney College of the Arts, she led design teams at major networks including the Seven and Nine Networks and the ABC, before transitioning to a full-time creative practice in ceramics, illustration, and watercolour.

Fran's lived experience as a working artist shaped the entire structure of Artflow Pro. She knew what it meant to prepare work for galleries; the admin burden, the documentation gaps, the difficulty of pricing. Her insight ensured that the platform wasn't just functional, it was intuitive for creatives who think visually and work with their hands.

From photo documentation and image storage to proposal creation and delivery tracking, every workflow in Artflow Pro reflects her lived experience in the studio.

Supporting Artists and Galleries Across All Mediums

Artflow Pro supports more than 20 recognised art forms including ceramics, sculpture, painting, textile arts, mixed media, photography, illustration, digital art, installations, and performance-based work. Whether you work with physical objects, digital media, or conceptual pieces, the platform is built to adapt to your practice.

Galleries gain enormous value from consistency. Artflow Pro provides a unified view of their represented artists, with accurate, standardised portfolio data and reporting tools that reveal performance by medium, price range, and time-to-sell. This helps gallery staff make informed curatorial, sales, and marketing decisions - and improves artist-gallery communication across the board.

Whether you're a solo artist selling directly, or a gallery managing multiple exhibitions and consignment workflows, Artflow Pro ensures the information behind every artwork is complete, correct, and ready to go.

Part of a Broader Creative Software Vision

Artflow Pro is the first in a suite of SaaS products being developed for the creative and education sectors, launching progressively throughout 2025. Each product is grounded in real-world use, developed by an experienced team, and tested by professionals in the field.

Based in Australia and built for a global audience, Artflow Pro brings together the discipline of enterprise software with the empathy of lived creative practice.

Built by professionals. Shaped by artists. Made for the real work of creative life.

About the Founders

Frances Smith is a ceramic artist, designer, and educator whose career bridges commercial design, television production, and fine art practice.

Formally trained at the Sydney College of the Arts, she led design teams at the Seven Network, Nine Network, and ABC before transitioning to studio ceramics.

Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows, featured in lifestyle publications, and collected internationally.

With a focus on illustrated porcelain and wheel thrown forms, Fran brings a deep understanding of the creative process and the day-to-day realities of life as a working artist.

Frances Smith | Ceramic Art Studio | ClayWeave | Studio Ceramics

Peter Smith is a retired CEO with more than 30 years of experience in software development, digital media, and interactive communications.

His career spans award-winning work as a film and television producer, director, writer, and cinematographer, followed by pioneering contributions to early interactive video systems in collaboration with IBM, Toshiba, and NCR.

He later developed Presentation Builder, a digital sales platform used by multinationals across the medical, IT, property, and investor relations sectors, and went on to lead the development of m-cast, a flexible digital signage system used internationally through partnerships with Fujitsu, Wincor-Nixdorf, and Torex/XN.

Digital Streams | Info-Onscreen | LinkedIn