Building a Website as an Artist: Portfolio, Prints, and Inquiries

A visual artist's website needs four things done well: a portfolio that organizes work by project rather than one long scroll, image files that stay sharp at full size, a documented way to sell an original or a print, and a clear path for someone to reach you about a commission or purchase. Squarespace bundles portfolio, image handling, and commerce in one product. Shopify is built specifically for selling, with more commerce depth but no dedicated portfolio page type. A Figma-designed site published through Figment gives you full design control over the portfolio itself, with no built-in store. None of these is a forced answer — match the platform to which of the four jobs matters most.

What does an artist's site actually need?

• A portfolio structure, not just a folder of images — something that groups work into projects or series a visitor can browse.
• Image quality that survives close viewing. Art is the product; a compressed or undersized image undersells the work the same way a blurry photo would.
• A documented way to sell, whether that's a one-of-a-kind original, a print run, or both.
• An inquiry path for a commission request, a price question, or a gallery or press contact — separate from a checkout flow.

How do I build a portfolio?

Squarespace has a dedicated page type for this. Its help center describes portfolio pages as "stylized landing pages that link visitors to sub-pages called projects," useful to "organize and showcase galleries, projects, portfolio highlights, and other content in one place" (Squarespace, "Portfolio pages", checked September 2026). Each project supports the same page sections, blocks, and gallery layouts as a standard page, so a project can hold a mix of images, text, and even a product block if you want to sell directly from that project. The same documentation notes portfolio pages don't have a dedicated commerce mechanism of their own — selling runs through Squarespace's separate store features, added into a project like any other block.

Shopify has no equivalent dedicated portfolio page type — it's built around product listings and collections, not project-based galleries. You can still organize work using collections (grouping products by series or medium) and a custom page for context, but the browsing structure is store-first, not portfolio-first.

Figma plus Figment gives you a fully custom portfolio layout with no page-type constraints at all, since you're designing every section yourself. Our roundup of free Figma portfolio templates covers files built specifically for visual work, and the considerations there (mobile layout, image-heavy grids) apply to any artist's portfolio, not just photography. Our photography portfolio guide covers the same jobs — galleries, image handling, inquiries — from a photographer's angle; most of it maps directly onto a painter's, illustrator's, or sculptor's site.

How do I keep image quality high enough?

Both major platforms document specific size and format guidance, and it's worth following exactly rather than guessing.

Squarespace recommends "a width of 2500 pixels" as ideal for most images, keeping files at "500 KB or less" for fast loading, within a hard "20 MB" upload limit (Squarespace, "Formatting images for display on the web", checked September 2026). Accepted formats are ".jpg, .gif, .png, or .webp," and Squarespace converts uploads to WebP automatically for performance (same source). For art photography specifically, that 2500px width is a floor, not a ceiling — a painting or print detail shot benefits from the upper end of what the platform accepts.

Shopify documents a higher ceiling: product and collection images can be "any size up to 5000 x 5000 px, or 25 megapixels," with a file size limit of "smaller than 20 MB," and a recommended "2048 x 2048 px" for square product images (Shopify Help Center, "Product media types", checked September 2026). The same page states plainly that "high resolution photos look more polished and professional to your customers" — a direct statement of why this matters more for art than for most other product categories, where texture and color accuracy are part of what's being sold.

How do I sell an original or a print?

Squarespace runs commerce through its store features, gated and priced by plan; our Squarespace ecommerce guide covers what each plan unlocks and its transaction fees. A one-of-a-kind original works as a standard product with a quantity of one; a print run works as a product with size or edition variants, the same as any other physical good sold through the platform.

Shopify documents product variants as the standard way to offer the same artwork in different forms — Shopify's own guidance for setting up variant options applies directly to offering a piece as, for example, multiple print sizes or a numbered edition alongside the original, with Shopify tracking inventory separately per variant. Shopify's broader ecommerce feature set (payments, shipping, discounts) is documented on its own help pages; check those directly for current plan-based limits before committing, since Shopify's plan tiers and fees are not reproduced here.

Neither platform documents an "original art" product type distinct from a standard product listing — you're using the same commerce tooling a T-shirt shop would, with the size/edition/original distinction expressed through variants or separate listings.

How do I handle commission requests and price inquiries?

This is a different job from checkout, and both platforms document a separate path for it.

Squarespace documents form blocks for this purpose; our Squarespace forms guide covers what a form block collects and where submissions go. A commission-inquiry or "ask about this piece" form works the same way as any other contact form on the platform.

Shopify ships a contact page template with every theme: "All Shopify themes have a built-in contact form that you can apply to the pages that you create," added by creating a new page and selecting the contact theme template (Shopify Help Center, "Add a Contact Us page to your store", checked September 2026). That's a route for general inquiries; a specific "make an offer" or per-piece inquiry flow beyond the standard contact form isn't a documented Shopify feature and would need a separate app or a manual process.

What if the portfolio itself needs to be a specific design?

If the way the work is presented matters as much as the work itself — a specific grid, unusual navigation, a layout no template quite gets right — designing it in Figma and publishing through Figment's plugin gives you that control. It adds none of the commerce or form tooling described above on its own: no built-in store, no contact form beyond what you design and connect to a separate service. That trade-off fits a portfolio-first site where sales happen through a linked store, a gallery, or direct contact, rather than a site that needs checkout built in.

What does each route document, side by side?

Which route fits which artist?

• You want one platform for portfolio and sales, without deep ecommerce needs: Squarespace's Portfolio pages plus its store features cover both in one product.
• Selling is the primary job and you need serious commerce tooling — inventory per print edition, discounts, multiple sales channels: Shopify's product and variant system is built for that, at the cost of a dedicated portfolio page type.
• The visual presentation of the work is the priority, and sales happen elsewhere (a gallery, a marketplace, direct contact): a Figma-designed site published through Figment gives you full control over that presentation, with commerce and forms handled separately.

Bottom line: Squarespace and Shopify each document real, specific tools for image quality, selling, and inquiries — they just weight portfolio structure and commerce depth differently. A Figma-plus-Figment site trades those built-in tools for full design control over how the work is shown, which fits when presentation is the main constraint.