Introduction
This Privacy Policy describes how Hayden Smyth Art LLC collects, uses, stores and protects personal information when you visit our website, correspond with our studio, request a quotation or commission a painting. The website at https://www.haydensmythart.hair is published under the developer name Hayden Smyth Art so that visitors can identify the studio responsible for the work shown here. We are a small portrait atelier and we treat personal information with the same care we give a prepared canvas, meaning we collect only what is needed, we keep it tidy and we do not hand it around.
Our registered organization details are Hayden Smyth Art LLC, 928 Amberly Dr, North Salt Lake - 84054-5063, United States (US). You may reach us about any privacy matter by email at art@haydensmythart.hair or by telephone at +18145544377. This policy applies to the website, to email and telephone enquiries, and to the commission relationship that may follow an enquiry. It does not apply to any third party website that you may reach through a link on our pages.
We have written this policy in plain language on purpose. If any part of it is unclear, please write to us and we will explain how it applies to your own situation. Using this website or sending us an enquiry means you have read this policy and you accept the practices it describes. If you do not accept them, the correct step is to refrain from using the website and to contact us by telephone instead so that we can discuss your concerns directly.
Scope of This Policy
This policy covers personal information that we collect through the website, through the contact form, through email messages sent to our studio address and through telephone conversations that we record in written notes. It covers information about prospective clients, current clients, past clients and any person named in a commission, such as the subject of a portrait or a gift recipient. It also covers information about visitors who only browse the website and never make contact.
This policy does not cover information that is publicly available, information that you share with us in a public forum, or information held by a third party that you reach independently of us. If you are an employee, contractor or supplier of the studio, separate arrangements may apply to the records we keep about our working relationship, and those arrangements are explained in the relevant agreement rather than in this policy.
Where a commission involves the likeness of another person, we rely on you to have the right to share that likeness with us. If you send a photograph of a child or of an adult who has not consented, you confirm that you hold the authority to do so. We will remove such material promptly if a person with authority asks us to.
Information We Collect
We collect the following categories of personal information, and only to the extent that it is useful for answering your enquiry or completing a commission.
- Identity information such as your name and, where a commission is billed to an organization, the name of that organization and your role within it.
- Contact information such as your email address, your telephone number and the postal address or delivery address that you provide.
- Commission details such as the subject of a painting, the size requested, the intended wall or room, the preferred deadline and any notes about colour or framing.
- Artwork files such as the photographs you send so that we can paint from them, which may include images of people, animals, buildings and places.
- Correspondence records such as the emails, written notes and messages exchanged during an enquiry or a commission.
- Billing information such as the amount agreed, the deposit paid, the balance due and the reference of a payment, though we do not store full payment card numbers.
- Technical information such as the pages you visit on this website, the approximate region from which you connect and the type of device you use, collected in aggregate form.
We do not collect sensitive categories of information such as health data, precise location tracking or biometric identifiers, and we do not ask for government identification numbers in the ordinary course of a commission. If a specific project ever required such information, we would ask for it separately and explain the reason in writing before you decided whether to provide it.
How We Obtain Information
Most of the information we hold comes directly from you. You provide it when you complete the contact form, when you send an email to art@haydensmythart.hair, when you telephone +18145544377, when you post a signed agreement or when you send photographs for a commission. In each case you choose what to share, and the studio works with what you decide to provide.
A smaller amount of information arises automatically when you use the website. Our hosting provider records ordinary server data such as the time of a request and the page requested, which helps us understand how the site is used and whether it is working correctly. This website does not run advertising trackers and does not build a marketing profile of you.
We may also receive information from a person who commissions a painting as a gift on your behalf, in which case we learn your name only so that the certificate or the finished work can be addressed correctly. If you would prefer that we hold no information about you in that situation, tell us and we will remove those details once the gift has been delivered.
How We Use Information
We use personal information to answer enquiries, prepare quotations, agree the terms of a commission, paint the work, arrange framing, collect payment and deliver the finished painting. Every use is tied to the service you have asked for rather than to any general business purpose that was never mentioned to you.
We also use information to keep our studio schedule in order, to send progress updates at the points we agreed, to issue gift certificates and to answer follow up questions after a painting has been delivered. We use ordinary website data to understand which pages are read and to fix faults, and we use correspondence records to remember what was agreed so that a later request for a matching painting can be handled accurately.
We do not sell personal information, we do not rent it and we do not trade it for any benefit. We do not use photographs supplied for a commission to advertise the studio unless you give explicit written permission for a specific image, and a refusal never affects the service you receive. If you grant permission and later change your mind, tell us and we will remove the image from every channel we control.
Photographs and Artwork Files
Photographs supplied for a commission are treated as working material. We store them in a private folder that is used only for the painting, and we keep them only for as long as they are needed to complete the work and to answer reasonable follow up requests. We do not publish them, we do not place them in a public gallery and we do not load them onto social media without your written agreement.
Where a client has permitted us to show a finished painting, we prefer to show the painting itself rather than the source photograph, because the source photograph is the private material and the painting is the public work. If you would like a painting kept entirely private, including the finished piece, tell us at the beginning and we will record that instruction with the commission file so that everyone at the studio respects it.
You may ask us to delete the source photographs at any time. Once a commission is complete and the painting has been delivered, we can delete the source images unless we still need them for a stated purpose such as a promised restoration or a matching second canvas. When you ask for deletion we confirm it in writing so that you have a record.
Lawful Bases for Processing
Where the law requires us to identify a lawful basis for handling personal information, we rely on the following grounds. We process information to perform a contract or to take steps at your request before a contract, which covers quotations, commissions, framing and delivery. We process information on the basis of your consent when you agree to receive studio news or when you permit us to show a finished painting in public.
We process information for our legitimate interests in running a small studio, which covers keeping correspondence records, maintaining the studio schedule, preventing misuse of the website and protecting our legal position in the event of a dispute. Where we rely on our legitimate interests we balance them against your rights, and if your rights outweigh our interest we will not proceed.
We process information to comply with legal obligations such as tax and accounting rules, which require us to keep records of sales for a set period. We also process information where it is necessary to protect the vital interests of a person, which would only arise in an emergency and is a rare event for a portrait studio. Where you have provided consent you may withdraw it at any time without affecting work already completed.
Service Providers
A service provider is a company that handles information on our behalf under our instruction. We choose providers that offer reasonable safeguards, and we limit what each one receives to the minimum needed for the task. Our providers include a website host, an email provider, a payment processor, a shipping carrier and an accounting service. Each of them receives only the slice of information that its role requires.
We keep a written note of which providers are active and what each of them does, and we review those arrangements when a provider changes or when the nature of our work changes. If a provider is unable to meet the standard we expect, we replace it rather than continue with a weaker safeguard. We do not authorise any provider to use your information for its own marketing.
Where a provider operates in another country, information may be handled outside the United States. When that happens we take reasonable steps to ensure the provider is bound by confidentiality and security commitments, and we will tell you the general location of processing if you ask. A portrait studio sends little data across borders, but we still take the point seriously.
How Long We Keep Information
We keep enquiry correspondence for up to two years after the last message, so that we can pick up a conversation where it left off. We keep commission records, including the final agreement and the delivery note, for the period required by tax and accounting rules, which is generally several years after the sale. We keep source photographs only for the time needed to complete the work, unless you ask us to keep them so that a later matching painting can be made.
When a retention period ends we delete the information or, where deletion is not practical, we remove the identifying details so that the remaining record can no longer be linked to you. We review our records regularly rather than keeping everything on the chance that it might be useful one day, because a small studio should not behave like a large archive.
If you ask us to delete information earlier than the standard period, we will do so unless a legal obligation or an active dispute requires us to keep it. When a legal obligation forces us to retain something, we will tell you what we are keeping and how long we expect the obligation to last, so that the situation is clear.
How We Protect Information
We protect personal information with practical measures suited to a small studio. Our devices use current software and screen locking, our accounts use strong passwords, and our website is served over an encrypted connection. We limit access to client records to the people who need them for the commission, and we do not leave printed client material in open view.
No method of storage or transmission is perfectly secure, and we cannot promise absolute protection. What we can promise is that we take reasonable steps, that we train ourselves to recognise fraud and phishing, and that we act quickly if something goes wrong. If a breach ever affects your information and creates a real risk to you, we will tell you and the relevant authority without undue delay, describing what happened and what we are doing about it.
We keep offline copies of finished commission records in a locked location so that an electronic failure does not destroy the history of a client relationship. Those copies are destroyed on the same schedule as the electronic records, so a backup is never a way of keeping information longer than this policy allows.
Your Privacy Rights
Subject to the law that applies to you, you may have the right to request access to the personal information we hold about you, to ask us to correct information that is wrong, to ask us to delete information that we no longer need, to ask us to restrict how we use it, and to object to certain uses. You may also have the right to receive a copy of the information you gave us in a portable format.
To exercise any of these rights, write to art@haydensmythart.hair or telephone +18145544377. Please describe what you would like us to do and give us enough detail to locate your records, such as the name used for the commission and an approximate date. We will respond within the period the law allows, and we will not charge a fee for a reasonable request.
If you believe we have handled your information improperly you may complain to us first, and we will try to put it right. You may also complain to a data protection authority or, in the United States, to the relevant state or federal regulator. We will never penalise you for exercising a privacy right, and no commission will be affected because you asked a question about your data.
California Privacy Notice
If you are a California resident, the following points apply in addition to the rest of this policy. We collect the categories of personal information described earlier, we use them for the business purposes described earlier, and we disclose them only to the service providers described earlier. We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for cross context behavioural advertising.
You have the right to know what categories of personal information we have collected, the sources of that information, the business purpose for collecting it and the categories of third parties with whom we share it. You have the right to request deletion of your personal information, subject to exceptions such as the need to complete a transaction or to comply with a legal obligation.
You have the right not to receive discriminatory treatment for exercising a privacy right. To make a request, contact us using the details in this policy and state that you are making a California privacy request. We will verify your identity before acting, usually by confirming details we already hold about your commission, and we will respond within the time the law allows.
Privacy for Children
This website is intended for adults who wish to commission a painting. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of thirteen through the website, and the contact form asks for adult contact details only. If a portrait is commissioned of a child, the commission is placed by a parent or a guardian, and we hold the child details only as part of that adult commission.
If you believe that a child has sent personal information to us without adult involvement, please tell us at art@haydensmythart.hair and we will delete the information promptly. We do not direct advertising at children, we do not offer a children account and we do not use a child likeness in any public channel without documented adult permission.
Where a school, a charity or a community group wishes to involve young people in a project, we will work with the responsible adult to put appropriate safeguards in place before any information is collected. That may include a written agreement, limited data collection and an agreed deletion date at the end of the project.
International Visitors
Our studio is located in the United States, and the information we collect is generally stored in the United States. If you visit the website from another country, you are sending information to the United States, where privacy law may differ from the law of your own country. We take reasonable steps to protect that information as described in this policy, wherever the information travels.
If you are in a region with specific transfer rules, such as the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, and you wish to commission a painting, contact us first so that we can explain how your information will be handled and whether any additional safeguard is appropriate. We are a small studio, and we would rather discuss the details up front than surprise you later.
Where a transfer safeguard is required, we will use a recognised mechanism such as standard contractual terms with a provider, and we will keep a record of the mechanism used. If no appropriate safeguard is available for a particular transfer, we will not make that transfer and will explain the limitation to you.
Links to Other Sites
Our pages may link to a third party website such as a map service or a payment page. Those websites are not controlled by us and this policy does not apply to them. When you follow a link you become subject to the privacy policy of the site you reach, and we encourage you to read it before providing any information.
We choose links for the convenience of clients, and a link is not an endorsement of everything a third party does with information. If you find a link on our pages that leads to a website you consider unsuitable, tell us and we will review whether the link should remain. We do not place tracking links that pass your identity to another site without your knowledge.
Where we embed a third party tool such as a map, the tool may set its own cookie when it loads. If you prefer to avoid that, you can use the plain address in this policy instead of the embedded tool, and we will happily give you directions in writing rather than through a map widget.
Changes to This Policy
We review this policy from time to time and we update it when our practices change, when a new service provider joins the studio or when the law requires a different wording. When we make a material change we will update the date at the foot of the page and, where the change is significant for existing clients, we will tell affected clients by email.
A change will never be applied retroactively in a way that reduces the protection of information already collected without telling you. If you continue to use the website or to commission work after a change takes effect, the updated policy applies to the new activity. If you do not accept the change, contact us and we will explain your options, including the deletion of information we no longer need.
We keep earlier versions of this policy in our records so that we can show what applied at the time a commission was placed. If you would like to see the version that was in force when you commissioned a painting, write to us and we will send it to you.
How to Contact Us
For any question about this Privacy Policy or about the information we hold, contact Hayden Smyth Art LLC at 928 Amberly Dr, North Salt Lake - 84054-5063, United States (US). You can email art@haydensmythart.hair or telephone +18145544377 during studio hours, which run Monday to Friday from 9:00 to 17:00 Mountain Time.
Please include your name, the email address you used for your enquiry and a short description of what you would like us to do. If you are asking about a commission, the approximate date and the subject of the painting help us find the right record quickly. We aim to acknowledge every privacy request within a few working days.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you are entitled to escalate the matter to the relevant regulator in your jurisdiction. We would rather resolve a concern with you directly, and we will always explain the reasoning behind any decision we make about your information, so that you can see how the law and our policy were applied to your situation.