Juliette Belmonte is a Costa Rican-born American artist whose unusual portraits are festooned with with flowers and colourful shapes, giving her subjects a surrealist air. She works from a mobile studio in a Westfalia camper van while she travels up and down the Californian coastline. For the past 15 years, Belmonte has managed to make a living by doing art fairs and exhibiting in various art galleries. Since June 2013 her sales have doubled thanks to an online art marketplace called Artfinder. "They also go more quickly and reliably," she tells the Independent from the van on the way to the Sierra Nevada mountains with her dog, Hugo.

William Tunstall-Pedoe, the founder of a voice recognition app that was acquired by Amazon and used to develop the Amazon Echo device, has invested in a London-based art startup called Artfinder. Tunstall-Pedoe, the founder of Evi Technologies, which later became Amazon Alexa, has been investing in artificial intelligence startups ever since he departed Amazon in February. Founded by Swedish entrepreneur Jonas Almgren in March 2013, Artfinder describes itself as an online art marketplace that helps people to find art spanning a variety of tastes, budgets, and styles. Artfinder claims to have 500,000 subscribers worldwide, with 8,500 artists selling their works on the platform. Artfinder announced the investment on Wednesday, saying that it has raised $2.2 million (£1.8 million) from Tunstall-Pedoe and venture capital firm Oxford Capital.