Artists today face a paradox. On one hand, the internet offers unprecedented opportunities for connection, visibility, and sales. On the other, sharing work online can feel like opening the door to misuse—unauthorized copies, reproductions, or images floating far from their source. For many, the thought of putting their art into the digital wild feels risky enough to hold them back.
Yet here’s the tension: the very act of withholding your work to keep it safe can cut off the same opportunities that help an art career thrive.
The Fear of Misuse
It’s not hard to see why hesitation arises. Artists have discovered their work reproduced without credit, cast into products they never approved, or borrowed too closely by other creatives. The thought of painstakingly producing an original work, only to see it replicated or misappropriated, strikes deep.
Protective instincts are natural—artwork feels like an extension of self. For some, that protective reflex becomes a roadblock: better to keep the work hidden than risk exploitation.
The Greater Risk of Obscurity
But here’s the hard reality: obscurity is usually more damaging than theft. An unseen painting cannot be sold. A body of work locked away will never resonate with collectors. And while bad actors exist, they rarely pose a greater financial or creative threat than the simple fact of not being discovered.
Sharing images online isn’t just about sales—it’s about making the connections that lead to sales. Collectors need to see your work multiple times, in multiple places, before making a purchase. A painting on your easel has no chance of catching their eye; the same painting posted on your website, in a newsletter, or on social media might.
Balancing Risk with Benefit
That doesn’t mean throwing caution to the wind. Reasonable steps can and should be taken to protect your intellectual property: copyright registration, careful tracking of where your images are shared, or legal recourse in cases of blatant misuse. But those measures are guardrails, not excuses to retreat.
The more important calculation is whether the benefits of online presence outweigh the risks—and for most artists they do. Exposure fuels opportunity. Collectors cannot form a connection to artwork they never see.
Reframing the Question
The question isn’t “How do I prevent every possible misuse of my images?”—because the answer to that is, you can’t. The better question is “How do I ensure more people see my work and have the chance to connect with it?”
Yes, there are risks. But there is also the joy of hearing from someone moved by a piece they discovered online. There is the sale that begins with a collector scrolling late at night and ends with a painting hanging in their home. Those moments cannot happen if the work stays hidden.
Moving Forward
Sharing artwork online will always involve a degree of vulnerability. It means accepting that a few people might use images in ways you wouldn’t approve. But it also opens the door to collectors, opportunities, and recognition that cannot come any other way.
The truth is simple: the reward of being seen almost always outweighs the risk of being copied.
I have my art on a website and I send the information to people who have expressed an interest. Some of them do buy my art, and do check the websites every now and then. However all the unsolicited contacts from strangers have appeared to be one form of scam or another. They offer me thousands more than my stated price to create an NFT or want me to use some new form of payment or send them extra money. I have learned to ignore these and have stopped putting any info about sales on the regular website. I have experimented with print on demand with the only use being to have a way to get my own prints to sell in galleries. I intend to just keep using the website as a venue for interested real people. If anyone has figured out a way to actually sell originals online without the constant deluge of scammers, I’d be interested!
I fear there is no current cure for this. I, too, would love a solution. Such a waste of time.
Can’t thank you enough for your openness on what you’ve faced and what to watch out for. As someone just starting out, this information is invaluable! I wish you luck and hope you get to a place and space you want to be with your art.
Please steal my stuff. lol. It’s a badge of honor. They may copy it or claim it as their own, but no one—can mistake me for anyone else. My history and body of work tells the tale, mostly from my imagination. I have work plastered across the web on several sites, including two of my own. There are probably 20 billion images online from the glut of artists posting online.
I watermark mine with my website. That way at least people can find me if the image gets shared by others. It also makes it a bit more difficult to copy. At least they have to work harder if they are trying to use it for prints etc. I started doing this after I saw my artwork on Amazon! Someone had put it on their bags and Chinese companies had made aprons etc. with my images. I did complain and hopefully it’s all removed but it’s hard to know. I’ve also had people on instagram steal my image to use on their products and tag me! They didn’t know they couldn’t do that.
My thoughts: Considering that artist’s images are currently being scraped for ai model training without artist’s permission or even citation, with no opt out here in the US, I would say your statement about “a few people” misusing our images is a gross understatement and misrepresentation of the bigger picture, albeit probably unintended. Furthermore, copyright registration is not necessary as the artist holds the copyright upon creation of the artwork. Per copyright.gov: “Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.” Registration may help in a legal battle if you bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work, but I don’t know too many artists who can take on that kind of financial strain, not to mention that copyright registration fees start at $45 for a single electronic filing.
Rhonda,
A few of your comments are incomplete. © registration most definitely gets you statutory damages and attorney fees if your work is registered ahead of the theft. It’s not a maybe. The $45.00 fee you quote is good for 1-700 pieces at a time. Not bad for $45.00. Putting that aside, $45 per registration is not costly, it’s a cost of doing business so one can thrive.
Yeah, not a very thrilling environment to share work into at the moment. I know there are people/companies working on technical solutions to AI scraping, but I don’t think any of them are foolproof yet.
I have been the attempted target of online scam probably 5 or 6 times, all through my website. I’ve had two people try to purchase pieces sending me cashiers cheques. Luckily my banker was able to recognize really good forgeries before I deposited them. They would have cleared initially but would have bounced about 10 days later, after I would have shipped the work.
I’ve also been contacted by someone pretending to be one of the world’s most famous collectors; it’s gotten to the point where I feel every one is a scammer or a thief. It’s very disheartening.
Even before the digital age artwork was being stolen and used for commercial and non commercial use. the internet just makes it easier and quicker to do. in the past it was common to have poster images copied , printed and in the marketplace even before the original publisher had distributed them. with the internet a scraped image can be in print within minutes and there is 0 can be done about it. AI can alter the images it is fed into thousands of iterations in seconds. Reproduction and distribution is so rapid and wide spread that there is no way to combat it.
Be watchful of your images and where/when you post them. If someone wants to buy a series of reproductions it may well be for copying purposes not for hanging. [this remains a common method of acquisition for image thieves] make one sale and give your art away!!
The solution is to paint. paint and paint faster than the theme can be stolen. they are copyists not creatives. their skill is in the use of images after the creatives have worked their magic. [find someone who has that skill legitimately and work with them as a partener, assistant etc. ]
Someone bought an original painting from me and, without my permission, had 3,500 copies printed. One day, I walked into a store and saw one of those prints—framed and displayed, the same size as my original. My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I felt violated, hurt, and deeply disrespected.
The irony is that the prints were ruined by a poor job at the press. The colours were completely off—far too much red, hardly any yellow. It looked so wrong that I doubt any true collector would have wanted to buy one. What was meant to be a reproduction of my work ended up as a distorted version that carried none of its life.
What fascinates me most is the lengths people will go to get their own way. In the end, this man was left with 3,500 prints that looked absolutely terrible, while I was left with a lesson I’ll never forget.
Wow!
Thing is, people who never saw the original won’t know that, and may like them enough to buy them. A surprising number of of people assume that any painting that doesn’t come with a 4-figure (or better ) price tag and a glaring copyright notice on the back “isn’t copyrighted” and can be freely duplicated without consequences. Unfortunately, they’re often right about consequences, because most artists can’t afford to enforce their copyrights, even if they bother to register their images.
Just this week, one of the painters in a casual group I paint with said there was a big issue with some of the paintings in our recent county fair: they’d been done in a workshop where the teacher had them agree to a stipulation that allowed them to sell their workshop paintings, but not display them. A few of these ribboned at the fair. And yes, she was one of those that considered established professionals to have “copyrighted” works and viewed student work as “uncopyrighted.”
In more than five years with a artist’s webpage, I have sold one print from it, after the buyer discovered the original painting on Facebook. I post to Facebook all the time, but don’t respond to any query until I do a background check. The Internet/worldwide web is the largest waste of time I have discovered.
Personally, I like a clean, flat work. Not only dies it put me in the minority (I guess textural work trumps smooth stuff in current collector trends), but it makes it easier for cheapskates to be happy with a reproduction. Now, I’m starting to explore more textural elements. And I do have a liking for metallic and other paints that can subtly change how the image looks as the angle of light against the canvas changes. That won’t reproduce at the local “same day” photo shop.
It’s sad that we have to worry about theft of our images, but that is a sad truth today with the internet. I don’t worry about it too much, but am aware of the possibilities.
In today’s world I am more disheartened by the number of scams out there, and they are ever-evolving. They make it almost impossible to trust any queries about my art anymore. Once one scam runs its course, another pops up to take its place.