Behind the curtain of ArtWanted.com

It has been requested in several recent posts, that we announce who is behind the curtain of ArtWanted.com, so here you go...

I am Andy, I'm the founder and creator of ArtWanted.com and also the sole owner in the company. I started it in early 1999, because of my love for art. I wanted to create a website to showcase the portfolios of artists and to hopefully bring some additional exposure to them. It started out as a hobby, but slowly turned into a business as the site grew. I never dreamed it would get as large as it is now.

I love looking at all the great artwork that is uploaded each day to this site. I'm an artist myself and went to 4 years of art school specializing in computer graphics and animation. I prefer computer illustration, but I also enjoy painting & drawing with traditional tools. I also taught college art classes for several years, before I had a family. I have four children and a beautiful wife.

Besides being an artist, I'm also a business man. I have started many successful businesses in the past and have plans for several more. It takes a large amount of money to run this website. As some of you know, ArtWanted.com does not make enough money to pay for all the equipment and staff to keep it running. Because of this, it is subsidized from my other business ventures to keep the doors open. Art Slam is my parent company that owns ArtWanted.com, PrintsWanted.com, ArtMorgue.com and any other future art websites I decide to create.

ArtWanted.com also has a staff of people that help run ArtWanted.com. We have a system administrator that keeps the servers/website running, customer service people that answer the e-mails and message board posts, and another programmer that helps me work out bugs and create new features. It's a small staff, but we hope that we can continue to grow it as the site grows. ArtWanted.com is a virtual business and our staff members work from their homes. There is no need to have the expense of a physical office, since we don't have any walk-in customers.

I also feel we need to mention the great site moderators that we have. They are really an extension of our staff that live around the country. These artists donate their time and efforts to make ArtWanted.com a better place. It's a tough job with little or no recognition, but they believe in the website and want to make it the best artist site on the net. It's not fun having to delete images or message board posts that sometimes lead to disputes, but without them, our site would be full of chaos.

We are flooded with hundreds of e-mails a day that need to be responded to and so we appreciate your patience if you need to wait several days for a reply. We will get back to you, it just takes time to read and respond to everything we get. However, if you don't get a response within a week, then e-mail us again, because we probably didn't get your e-mail.

ArtWanted.com is growing bigger and bigger every single day. We have hundreds of new artists that join every month and our website hits are going through the roof. For this, we thank all of you. We know that you are telling your friends about the website and it really shows.

We have a ton of great improvements planned for ArtWanted.com - I have a huge list of artist suggestions and other ideas I have come up with to make our website even better. All of these will be completed as time & money permits. Keep your suggestions coming, we read and record every single one we see.

Well hopefully this answers a few questions that some of you had about our staff and history. If you have any more questions, you can post them here or send us an e-mail at [email protected] - If you have a personal question just for me, just put ATTN: ANDY in the subject line and our staff will make sure it gets to me.

Thanks again for your membership and your talented artwork you display here. A special thanks to those that are Premium Members that truly support our site. We couldn't do it without you. Thanks!

Sincerely,

Andy Evans, Founder

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