The Russian is coming

Lysakov paints in Russia, shows in California and sells in Reno.

And why not, in a wired world.

Heather Neal, Reno-based vice president of sales and marketing at Lysakov Art Company Inc. sees her job as a way to continue a career in the arts while working at home, on site with her children.

Meanwhile, the Lysakov gallery in Pacific Grove, Calif. takes orders and ships product.

The artist, Victor Lysakov, is based in Moscow. While well known in Europe and Russia, he's a new name in the United States, says Neal.

She means to change that.

Neal is about to launch a marketing blitz to over 500 avant-garde galleries in 17 major art markets. She researched galleries on the Internet to select those compatible with Lysakov's style. Working from Reno, she'll follow up with phone calls, but must leave home for on-site gallery inspections.

Lysakov Art Company owner Randall Swanson met the artist when the former Russian-language major visited Moscow on a business trip and befriended the son of the Russian painter. A career as an entrepreneur and investor had positioned Swanson to start his own publishing company, so he took on the task of bringing the Russian painter's art to the U.S.

Neal's introduction to the artist was also serendipitous. Her husband played at the same golf club as did Swanson.

And while Neal's got a track record in the art business, this time around she's playing a vastly different game. She's stepped from selling perhaps the best-known working artist in the nation to introducing a largely unknown foreigner.

Neal left a marketing job in the corporate machine that sells Thomas Kinkade, ubiquitous in this country for pastoral and idyllic scenes. At Kinkade, she had managed sales programs for 28 district managers.

Now she's a sales machine of one, and her artist produces a darkly dreamlike product. Plus, Neal has to launch from a dead stop: Lysakov is sold in this country at a single gallery that won't open until February.

Sound impossible? It helps, says Neal, that the company owner has the financial backing to fund advertising placement, produce marketing collateral, build a beautiful gallery, launch lysakovartcompany.com and, of course, to hire her as sales director.