Perth Voice Interactive

IT’S often feast or famine for full-time artists like Robert Davis.

When you’ve got a gallery showing you can be making some good sales, but between exhibitions it’s lean times.

The North Perth painter has been heading down to the Beaufort Street art market the past couple of months to sell a few extra pieces on the side.

“It’s a good way for artists to pay their rent,” he says.

Trained at the Royal College of Art in London, he’s been painting for 50 years. Most of that was full-time, though for a while he worked on projects for old lefty Phillip Adams.

Markets organiser Lesley Thomas says artists are charged only a small amount in order to cover the costs: “We’re not looking to make money, we’re looking to provide a venue for artists to sell their work,” she says.

For $15, suitcase artists can set up affordably enough that art students have been taking it up. One suitcaser sold $700 in one day. The markets run the first Sunday of the month at the Barlee Street car park.

by DAVID BELL