A good art portfolio website shows a tight selection of your work large and uncluttered, grouped into series, with title, medium, size and year for each piece, plus a short artist statement, a CV and an easy way to ask about buying or commissioning. Galleries, curators and collectors look for that, and little else. Below are layouts that suit paintings, illustration, ceramics and photography, a prompt for an emerging painter's site, and a commissions form that saves every inquiry so none get lost in your inbox.
What collectors and galleries look for
- A consistent body of work. Curators want to see a voice. Group work into series rather than mixing everything on one page.
- The work, big. Images should fill the screen when tapped, with true colour and no heavy watermarks across the middle.
- The details. Title, medium, dimensions, year and availability for each piece. Collectors ask about size more than anything else.
- Context. A short artist statement in plain language, and an about page with a photo of you or your studio.
- Credibility. A CV with exhibitions, residencies, press and education, even if it is short.
- A clear next step. Inquire about this work, Commission a piece, or Join my studio list.
Gallery layouts that suit the work
There is no single best layout. Pick the one that fits your work, then keep it consistent across the site.
- Even grid with square crops: tidy for illustration and design work, but crops can hide the composition. Show the full image when tapped.
- Masonry grid with natural proportions: suits painting and photography where shapes vary.
- One work per screen, scrolling: slow and gallery-like. Good for large paintings and sculpture.
- Series pages: a cover image per series on the home page, each opening its own grid with a short statement.
- Installation and detail shots: for sculpture, textiles and mixed media, show the whole piece, a detail and the piece in a room for scale.
Art portfolio website examples to model
Borrow a structure that matches your situation rather than copying one artist's site. Four common shapes:
- Emerging painter: home with one hero image and three series, a works page per series, about with statement, CV, and contact. Five pages in total.
- Illustrator taking commissions: home grid, a Commissions page with what you take on, turnaround and starting prices, a form, and a shop link if you sell prints elsewhere.
- Ceramicist or sculptor: series pages with multiple angles per work, a Studio page with process photos, and a mailing list signup for kiln openings or sales.
- Photographer: full-screen projects with minimal text, a short bio and a contact form. Pair it with ideas from our portfolio website guide.
Build it with AI
In VibeDream, tap New Project, choose Direct Prompt and describe the site. Attach a screenshot of a site whose feel you like and two or three images of your own work so the AI can pick colours that suit them. Here is a starting prompt for an emerging painter.
An art portfolio website for Lena Ortiz, a painter in Lisbon working in oil on large canvases. Home: one full-width image, my name, one line about my work, and three series with cover images. Each series page: masonry grid, tap to view full screen with title, medium, size, year and Available or Sold. About: photo, 150-word statement, CV list. Commissions page with a form: name, email, budget range, size, timeline, message. Very quiet design, off-white background, black text, no borders, the art does the talking. Phone first.- Add each series by attaching its images and pasting a list of titles and details in the same order.
- Ask for full-screen view to support swiping between works on a phone.
- Ask for the Available or Sold label to be editable from a private page, so you can update it after a sale without a new prompt.
- Check colours. Ask for no tinted backgrounds behind the images so the work shows true.
Large galleries are easier with an upload page only you can reach. Uploads use the storage that comes with your plan, with no separate cloud account; see the file uploads guide. Compress images to a sensible web size first so pages stay quick on phones.
Commissions and inquiries form
An inquiry that vanishes is a sale you never knew about. Ask for the form to save every submission in your app and show them on a private page behind a passcode, newest first, with the piece they asked about attached. If you also want each inquiry in your inbox, connect an email sending service, add its key in project settings as shown in the API keys guide, and ask the AI to forward each new inquiry to you.
Put a few facts next to the form to filter inquiries: what you accept, typical turnaround, a starting price and whether you ship. Collectors like knowing before they write. One-tap payments are coming soon. To sell today, connect your own Stripe account, or link out to the shop you already use for prints. For tips from fans, the Supporter Page template has the layout ready for when payments arrive.
Writing your artist statement and about page
Many artists dread the statement, and it shows: dense, abstract paragraphs that say little. A statement on a website should do one job, which is help a stranger look at your work with more interest. Aim for 100 to 200 words in the first person.
- Start with what you make and how: I paint large oil landscapes from memory, working wet into wet.
- Say what draws you to the subject, in concrete terms. A place, a question, a material.
- Mention one or two things a viewer might notice, such as repeated colours or a recurring figure.
- Leave out theory unless it is central to the work. Plain language reads as confidence.
- Read it aloud. If you would not say it to someone at an opening, rewrite it.
The about page can be warmer than the statement. Add a photo of you in the studio, where you are based, your background and how people can work with you. Keep the CV as a simple list grouped by year: solo and group exhibitions, residencies, awards, collections, press and education. If the list is short, that is fine. Accurate and current beats padded. Ask the AI to set it out as a clean list, and update it by pasting new lines into the chat after each show.
Domain and finishing touches
- Press Put it online for a live address such as lena-ortiz.vibedreams.ai with HTTPS. Each publish costs 5 credits.
- Connect www.lenaortiz.art or similar with a TXT and a CNAME record at your registrar. The deployment guide has the steps.
- Give each series page a title like Tides, oil paintings by Lena Ortiz, and add alt text to every image.
- Put the site link on your social profiles, your email signature and the back of every print.
Squarespace and portfolio services made for artists are also good choices, and usually cheaper. VibeDream suits artists who want a layout that does not look like a stock template and a commissions flow that fits how they work. Plans start at $49 a month on All Access Mini.