Dear Reader, I'll be upfront and honest with you -- I want to sell my art in a professional and businesslike manner. I know you're taken aback and may take a while to recover from the shock, but I am determined to exchange my artworks for filthy lucre. ("Lucre" is defined as "shameful profit" and I'm proud of it).

As I go about my daily life, I buy goods and services from dozens of people and companies. I don't know why, but I expect good service. I am a stickler for expecting companies to answer the telephone promptly and efficiently when I call. I believe my well-reasoned emails should merit a response within a reasonable time. I take the view that the machines of industry should be well oiled and that business should proceed in a prompt and efficacious way.

Then we come to art. I paint pretty pictures. You have money and like original art. Let's do a deal.

You have to be smoking weed. It doesn't work that way and, even in this Internet age with...

The idea that a potential buyer of art must see the painting before considering a purchase seems to have wide currency among the populace at large. There is general agreement that a photographic image -- digital or analogue -- is not an acceptable substitute for the real thing at close-up range. And, as an art lover viewing paintings at an exhibition, I strongly agree that even modern image reproduction processes in catalogues don't do justice to the actual artworks on gallery walls in front of me.

But my paintings don't bear a "Monet", "Picasso", "Dali" or a thousand other famous signatures, and they don't bear a price tag with six or seven zeros, so I'm not sure we should be too precious about always seeing the real thing versus an image.

In the last month I have sold a painting to a customer in Beijing, P R China for a not insignificant price. I have never met this buyer, nor had the buyer seen the original in Melbourne. However, I think it highly relevant that...

I would hazard a guess that many readers will have bought many items online in recent years. Did anyone buy original art online? If not, why not?

Despite the apparent risks of using one's credit card in the wicked world of cyberspace, I have bought airline tickets to holiday destinations without a thought. My online purchases, amounting to several hundreds of dollars, were for a vacation - a discretionary expenditure, just like original art. I don't need to fly to an exotic location to survive. I need food, water and oxygen. Most people can live successful lives without original art on their walls. So, what's the parallel here?

Many people I have spoken to would agree that "art is different". One can buy books on line, clothes on line, holidays online, airline tickets online, but art ...... no, original art is different. One has to see the artwork "in the flesh" so to speak. What's the main issue? Is it a matter of risk? Is it a fake? Is it fair value?...