Lynne Strover
For the past 14 years Lynne Strover has been running a successful art gallery from her former school-house home in Fen Ditton...
How
did it all begin?
It's
an interesting, and can be, an entertaining story, with a successful end
– but I don't dwell on the 'single mum on benefits with no art background
anymore'... I've moved on.
Initially
you rented space to local artists to exhibit – how did it progress
from there?
I
learned how you could run a gallery; it’s got to be about relationships
– the triangle of the gallery owner, the client and the artist. “Thank
God for Margaret Thatcher” I’ve said, and not a lot of people
say that! It was her forty pounds a week Enterprise Allowance that was
the deciding factor whether I started or not. I went into it with low
expectations you see, but creating the Lynne Strover Gallery meant I could
stay at home and look after my children at the same time...
And
your first exhibition?
For the first year or so I was just hiring out the
space, but I made sure that everybody put their name and address in a
book – and that was the start of my database.
And
now that database is huge?
No, actually – because the business has changed;
you lose people and you gain people.
It hasn’t snow-balled, in fact I think it’s quite a difficult
market really.
What
is your main market?
I
think it would be a bit presumptuous of me to think I knew the market
– I just put what I think is good art on the wall, present it
well, do everything to the highest quality and then hope people come along
and value it enough to buy it. The new market of 30-something buyers is
noticeable though – people who would formerly have never have dreamed
that they would be able to purchase a painting. The ‘ifree art scheme’
which allows you to buy art interest-free over several months rather than
paying the whole lot at once has helped enormously, and been really successful
and now I've got a new data bass of younger clients, not collectors, but
they value art and it adds to their life. It’s a pretty organic though,
a changing process and you've always got to be thinking ahead...
And
you’re doing okay?
A bit better than ‘okay’. I’m a Northerner,
so you always say “not so bad,” but actually, from humble beginnings,
I suppose I've been quite successful.
Which
famous artist would love to stuff your gallery with?
What helps me in the business is that I am actually
helping artists and if the artist was dead and the art was just a commodity
it would be a different business. I like contemporary art and the challenge
of dealing with artists. I don't exactly enjoy the challenge, but I’m
driven – otherwise I would have closed years ago and got a proper
job...
