Sitting in Bermuda, owner and curator Lisa Howie can tell if someone is keen on one of the more than 200 works of art for sale at her online gallery, Black Pony.

Just like in a bricks-and-mortar gallery, someone whose eye is caught by a particular work of art on a virtual marketplace returns for a closer look.

Ms Howie says: “When I see that someone obsesses, who looks again and again and again at a piece, I am not surprised when I get an e-mail to say that someone is interested.

“They can pull it onto their television or desktop and really look at it closely and get a real sense of what the image looks like and feels like.”

That comfort level with seeing a work of art online, and then purchasing it, has grown since the Covid-19 pandemic began to impact consumers’ shopping habits, Ms Howie says.

She said: “It is interesting that people are comfortable and able to make decisions to purchase art without having to stand in front of it. They are able to make a connection with something; it’s that connection that makes art appealing. They stay with it and stay with it enough that they say ‘wow, I want to own that’.

Ms Howie added: “Something around the online market has changed in the year of Covid. You have seen a quick turn in attitude in people interested in buying art online.

“I think people want to ensure that our creatives, and our creative industries, continue to evolve and prosper. People buy from me because they want to ensure that artists have success as well as satisfying an aesthetic interest.”

Ms Howie launched Black Pony in mid-2019. A former executive director of the Bermuda National Gallery, she now works part-time at the National Museum of Bermuda as its director of learning and engagement.

The gallery is hosted on the Artsy online platform, where Ms Howie pays a monthly fee to be featured alongside events such as London Art Fair as well as galleries, museum collections, foundations, artist estates and benefit auctions. There are some 600,000 works of art available for sale on Artsy, ranging in price from $100 to more than $1 million.

She said: “When they persuaded me to come aboard, I wondered how I would possibly be able to surface on that platform full of big-name galleries. But if you create a viewing room for exhibitions, you rise to the surface. As you hold exhibition after exhibition, you continue to surface, to rise to the top on the search network.”

Ms Howie currently represents 16 contemporary artists from five islands – Niels Reyes and Aimée Garcia from Cuba, Dede Brown from The Bahamas, David Bridgeman from Cayman Islands, Leonor Almeida Pereira from the Azores, and from Bermuda: AB Wilson, Jacqueline Alma, James Cooper, Carlos Santana Dill, Graham Foster, Jayde Gibbons, Gherdai Hassell, Kevin Morris, Teresa Kirby Smith, Richard Edson Sutton, and Dr Charles Zuill.

Most of the work for sale is original, although there are some limited edition prints.

Ms Howie curates and selects the works for Black Pony, and has met all the artists that she represents.

She said: “A lot of people refer artists to me, but it is important to me to know them. Black Pony is all through my lens. I don’t have a partner, I don’t follow trends. I follow my heart.”

Sale proceeds are split 70/30 in favour of the artist. The 221 pieces on Black Pony range in price from $375 for a limited edition print up to $10,000 for an original work.

Ms Howie said: “Sales have been increasing steadily since I started. Each month has been better both in terms of numbers and value.”

She said the top collectors who purchase art on the site are Bermuda residents, adding: “They buy the whole range.”

A local collector has commissioned a work by Mr Reyes, while another has purchased a work by Ms Almeida Pereira.

Ms Howie said: “Conversely, a Cayman artist’s work went to a Caymanian collector, so the artist gets to meet the collector.”

Demonstrating Artsy’s international reach, other works have sold to collectors in Paris, Amsterdam, New York, New Jersey, and Florida.

Ms Howie, who says she is available to answer questions by people interested in collecting art, says: “People around the world are searching for the underrepresented markets that are yet to be fully tapped because, once they are, values rise and collectors shift again.”

Much collecting is done at art fairs and art biennials around the world, but Ms Howie says: “There is a parallel online market with no barriers. Everyone can get there.”

For more, see the Black Pony Gallery on the Artsy platform at www.artsy.net/blackponygallery.