Durham Fine Artist Says the Shrinking Global Art Market Is the Best Thing That Could Happen to Independent Artists
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Durham Fine Artist Says the Shrinking Global Art Market Is the Best Thing That Could Happen to Independent Artists
April Paige responds to the Art Basel & UBS report showing a 12% drop in global art sales, arguing the correction is clearing space for meaning over art as an investment in a portfolio.
DURHAM, N.C. — July 1, 2026 — While auction houses report their steepest sales decline since the pandemic, Durham-based fine artist April Paige is calling the downturn a turning point worth celebrating, not for the art market's speculators, but for the artists and collectors it left behind.
In a new blog published on AprilPaigeFineArt.com, Paige responds directly to the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2025, which found global art sales fell 12% in 2024 to an estimated $57.5 billion, with auction sales of works above $10 million dropping 39%. Her argument: the contraction at the top of the market is exposing what was broken about it all along and revealing where the real growth is happening.
She points to a detail buried in the same report: small dealers earning under $250,000 annually grew their sales by 17% in 2024, the second straight year of growth for that segment, even as overall transaction volume rose.
"The market we've been having has really been just plain, old-fashioned bad for art itself," Paige writes, citing art critic Blake Gopnik's assessment of the correction. "When the hype drains out, when the flipping and the speculation and the trend-chasing recede, what's left on the shore is the only thing that ever mattered: meaning."
Paige, who works in oil and acrylic across abstract, figurative and spiritually themed pieces, argues that decades of financialization turned original art into an asset class. She should know as she had a 25+ year career in the financial industry. Art was bought to hedge, flip or signal status rather than to be lived with in a home, office, business. As that speculative layer retreats, she says, the collectors who remain are the ones who were never chasing a trend line in the first place: people furnishing a home, marking a life transition, or simply unable to walk past a painting that moved them.
"A quieter market helps art collectors listen again," Paige said. "I'm not painting for a market cycle. I'm painting for the person who walks into a room and stops breathing for a second."
The essay arrives as Paige continues to build a career outside the traditional gallery system. Selling original work directly through her studio, Saatchi Art and Artsy, and through partnerships with interior designers and realtors, while producing and hosting a show called ‘Artist Antics with April’, an interview series spotlighting independent creatives across disciplines.
Her full blog, "The Art Market Is Shrinking. I Think That's the Best News I've Heard All Year," is available now at AprilPaigeFineArt.com.
About April Paige April Paige is a Durham, North Carolina-based fine artist and the founder of April Paige Fine Art LLC. Working primarily in oil and acrylic, her paintings move across abstract, figurative, landscape and symbolic styles, exploring themes of consciousness, transformation and emotional liberation. Her original work sells through AprilPaigeFineArt.com, Saatchi Art, Artsy and a growing network of interior designers and realtors. She has been featured in VoyageRaleigh Magazine and CanvasRebel Magazine, and is a member of the Durham Art Guild and Visual Art Exchange Raleigh. Former Senior Corporate Marketer for JPMorgan, NewYork Life, MetLife and AtData.
Media Contact:
April Paige, Owner & Fine Artist
www.AprilPaigeFineArt.com
info@aprilpaigefineart.com
c 941-586-6550
Instagram – @april_paige_fine_art
Pinterest - @APaigeFineArt
Facebook – @April Paige Fine Art
Tik Tok – @April_Paige_Fine_Art
Twitter – @AprilPaigeFA
YouTube – @AprilPaige-AAWA
Additional pictures available upon request.
