How to Build an Art Portfolio Website
In the art world, identifying talent can feel challenging and sometimes arbitrary. Subtle cues can significantly influence how viewers, connoisseurs, and scouts perceive an artist’s work. A website signals that a visual artist, photographer, illustrator, or designer takes their craft seriously.
As a web professional, you have the skills to help them showcase their art effectively. Their website may be how many first encounter their work, making you an instrumental steward of their career by creating a thoughtful, compelling online presence. Plus, because of the visual and vibrant nature of artists’ work, you have a lot to play with.
Define the objective
The first step in designing any website is understanding its purpose. Many artists are looking for a way to showcase their work in the best light possible—to share it with collectors, critics, journalists, curators, art galleries, museums, and more. Illustrators, designers, and other creatives may also want to share their work with a similar mix of the general public and industry professionals, so their websites will likely resemble a portfolio website.
Part of presenting an artist’s work is telling the story behind it, so the website should provide the context necessary to best appreciate the art. Site visitors should be able to quickly understand the artist, their work, and what makes them special based on the information and imagery included on the site. Sometimes, featuring a short artist statement on the homepage can do just that (more on this below).
Choose an aesthetic
From painters and illustrators to photographers and sculptors, artists have strong design sensibilities, so it’s vital to establish an aesthetic that works in harmony with their work.
Think about presenting their art in the same way a gallery or museum would. Most contemporary galleries use the “white cube” approach, placing the works on white walls that minimize distraction and allow the work to speak for itself. Everything from font choice to background color and layout should be as elegant, unobtrusive, and functional as possible.
Another approach is to consider the website as an extension of the art itself. Display design elements directly from the artist’s work, taking inspiration from their characteristic style and implementing it throughout the website.
Showcase the artist’s work
Artists spend their careers creating dozens or hundreds of intriguing, beautiful, and visually striking works, so you’ll want to spotlight their portfolio in all its glory. Some basic variables will factor into how you choose to display their work. For those with a critical mass, a grid display is a great choice. Other artists may have fewer projects under their belt, so you can treat each one as its own feature with an image block.
If displaying your client’s work in gallery blocks, consider separating different media with submenus (e.g., “Paintings,” “Sculptures”). This can preserve an orderly appearance and simplify navigation. Submenus are also great to organize different series or bodies of work.
Emphasize the importance of quality, standardized work images. For paintings and other visual art, include tightly cropped, front-facing photographs or screenshots of each work. Size the images for the web, as an art portfolio containing potentially hundreds of slow-loading, ultra-high-resolution images aren't just slow to load, but also present opportunities for people to generate unlicensed prints and reproductions.
Establish a convention for formatting work descriptions (title, year, medium, dimensions) and stick to it. Look at the websites for galleries selling high-value work from well-established artists to see what conventions they use for a particular medium. Consider organizing your client’s portfolio in reverse-chronological order to give visitors a sense of how the artist’s work has evolved.
Think through any peculiarities that might alter how to effectively display the art. For example, a photorealistic painter might want to display images of them actually painting the work so viewers don’t mistake their paintings for photographs.
Don’t be afraid to be selective about which artworks are featured in the portfolio, particularly if your client produces a lot of work. Doing so empowers them to put their best foot forward. It also makes it simpler to manage the site moving forward, as it doesn’t require professional imagery for every single work completed.
Tell their story
Art can speak for itself. But an artist statement makes the work more accessible. A great artist statement can add color and strengthen understanding. It can puzzle and beguile, deepening a visitor’s interest. A great artist statement can also help people talk about the work, giving them a new way to share it with others. You can think about it, in that sense, as another marketing tool and add copywriting service to the project.
Some artists really enjoy giving this context, while others don’t. A straightforward description of who the artist is and how they work is often all you need. As long as the artist statement covers the basics, it's acceptable to be light on text. Sometimes it’s even preferable.
About pages are also great places to share an artist’s resume or CV. These should include their:
Educational background
A list of solo and group exhibitions
Excerpts from and links to press coverage of their work
Publications featuring their work
Grants and awards received
Residencies participated in
Testimonials from professional collaborators and notable supporters
Past commissions
Include contact information
Regardless of your client’s approach, being accessible to serious collectors, curators, and critics via email or phone can help boost their career. Add a contact page and include contact information in the footer so visitors know how to connect.
Connect to social media
Artists have a lot to share, from stunning work images, to exhibition openings, awards, and press coverage. Your client can use social media to give their fans glimpses into their studios and creative processes. They can also highlight works that are available for sale and share content that helps grow their audience. Adding social icons can add visibility and help your client build an engaged community of fans that love their work.
Likewise, adding links to their website in their social media bios is a great way to drive traffic. With Bio Sites, your client can add unlimited links to social media platforms and promote various projects and events to engage followers.
Set up an online store
Being able to sell work directly through a website can be a game-changer for an artist. With Squarespace’s ecommerce features, you can position your client to sell print editions or merchandise featuring their imagery. These are great ways for artists to monetize their work while making it accessible to collectors and fans who may not be ready to invest in one-of-a-kind pieces.
Some galleries require prospective collectors to inquire about the price and availability of a work. However, your client may want to consider that making pricing “available on request” could lead visitors to assume the work is out of their price range. Even serious buyers may feel reluctant to ask, so help them weigh the decision carefully. Keep in mind that artists with gallery representation will usually have contractual agreements that affect how they can sell their own work, so confirm this information with your client before you list pricing.
Streamline payments and invoicing
If your client sells commissioned artwork, having a seamless payment and invoicing system is essential to managing their patrons and ensuring they get paid for their work. Unlike traditional ecommerce transactions, commissioned pieces often involve a more complex sales process—requiring clear communication, upfront deposits, milestone payments, and final balances before delivery. Without an efficient invoicing system, artists may find themselves chasing payments, losing track of requests, or struggling with manual record-keeping.
Through their Squarespace site, your client can streamline this process by sending professionally branded proposals, estimates, contracts, and invoices—all in one place. This not only adds legitimacy to their business but also improves the client experience by keeping everything organized and transparent.
When it’s time to collect payment, Squarespace Payments integrates directly with their site, enabling patrons to pay securely and conveniently. Because invoicing is included with every Squarespace website plan, artists can manage their commissions without incurring extra subscription fees for third-party tools.
By centralizing these operations, they save time, minimize administrative hassle, and ensure that every step of their commission process—from inquiry to payment—is smooth and professional. Learn more about using Squarespace Payments to boost ecommerce sales.
Implement a booking system
For those clients who do offer commissioned work or custom projects, it should be easy for prospective patrons to make inquiries. A clear call to action—whether through a contact form or booking link—helps streamline the process and reduces back-and-forth communication. By integrating Acuity Scheduling, you can help your client automate consultation bookings, allowing clients to select available times, provide project details, and even make upfront payments if required. This saves time and ensures a smooth, professional experience from the first interaction.
Showcase an artist’s work with a website
Sometimes the primary variable that determines whether a work of art ends up on the wall of a museum or in a rack in a thrift store is its presentation. As a web designer, you have the skills to set your client up with a beautiful website that can change the course of their career, engage visitors, and convert them into customers.
This article was originally published on May 10, 2023. It has since been updated.
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