Valley verve: Company helps area artists market their works nationally
Valley resident Dean Cameron is an axis for creative energy and an axle that keeps the energy rolling forward.
In sales and marketing much of his life, Cameron currently works as sales manager for Multifab. A year ago, he decided to act as a catalyst for artists to gain exposure by selling and managing their creativity, and he began the American Fine Art Co.
The first collection to be handled by Cameron’s company was the Rose & Hopkins American Indian Portrait Collection, historical (more than 100 years old) Native American photographs turned into fine art prints. Now Cameron handles other collections by five area artists – Marcella Rose, Linda Besse, Renee Rigsby, Debbie Hughbanks and de l’Aigle.
De l’Aigle’s water media landscapes provoke feelings of awe and longing and capture sunsets, forests, mountains, the aurora and other beautiful havens.
Rigsby’s watercolors are vivid and capture light in gardens and market places.
Besse’s oil paintings stop time for wildlife in motion, and Hughbanks’ acrylics and pastels do the same for horses, buffalo and western living.
Rose’s work includes abstracts, landscapes, flowers, surreal and dreamlike pieces, and intense portraits of animals. The latter collection is her most recent and is titled Northwest Spirit. In this collection, a mystic cougar seems to question and plead with the viewer while a moon wolf seems to be challenging a viewer to look deeply.
The artists are award winning, published and gifted. “I cannot think of a more honorable profession than to share those gifts,” said Cameron, “I would like to see American Fine Art Co. be an instrument that helps promote our talent in this region.”
The artists are pleased to oblige and consider Cameron a good front man.
“I am thrilled and honored to be one of the artists involved in this company,” said Hughbanks, “He is fantastic at marketing and looking at nontraditional ways to market artwork that perhaps hasn’t been tried before.”
Cameron advertises in national magazines, was featured in a cover story for Art World News, and networks with hotels and homebuilders.
“I have always had a love for art and have been amazed at what artists can do and how that talent brings thought-provoking emotion from people,” Cameron said. A believer in the words “you can,” Cameron was challenged by the common belief that an artist can’t make a living in Spokane. He is out to prove that wrong.
His company finances the publishing of limited-edition prints of the artists’ original works. American Fine Art Co. also does all that it can to bring unique, homegrown and heartfelt works of art to the forefront of American consumption.
“How terrible it would be if we were subjugated to an artless society,” Cameron said.