@ Tan: Don't worry... you weren't the first.

@ Meliya: That is the hard part. ^^;;

Was kinda hoping if anyone here knew how much of a percentage of the sale is taken by the gallery owner.

If you're selling your own art..I would say..no. If you're selling someone else's..it depends..

If selling your own...

If your art is decent you can find local galleries and charge them a flat rate usually. You just bring what you have completed to them, they buy it at the flat rate, they resell. If you notice it is selling higher you can try to increase the flat rate or ask them a certain percentage in addition to the flat rate.

This encourages them to sell it, plus you have a steady income.

In addition, they advertise for you. For example, I sell my stuff to The Galleria. They pay a flat rate of $135 per 16 x 12 inch painting. In addition, I get 30% of the final sales excluding the flat rate.

Also, they keep my contact information for anybody who is interested to contact me. If someone is referred by them to me, they get 10% of my final sales on those, because they did not house them or anything so it is a lot lower.

This saves you a lot of problems. You don't have to pay for rent, you don't have to pay utilities you never have to fix anything, all you have to do is paint. The hassle you have to deal with opening your own shop is probably not worth it. You have to factor in that someone must be there to operate the place, AND this leaves you with less time for yourself or your art.

Plus you'd have to buy a place up first. x_x'

i think owning your own gallery would be an adventure.

going out and finding artists, meeting people - meeting other people through them, going to local colleges maybe - that would be AWESOME. of course, you'd have to be very businessy and probably a little bit of a shark to be good at this sort of thing. i mean, knowing you're going to benefit off someone else's work by simply re-selling whatever it is they sell you/let you sell. of course then there's the helping someone get more cred & possible future jobs thing too. that's always nice.