Imagine your smartphone as a kind of mobile art gallery. You’ve imagined NokyArt.

NokyArt is a widget for Nokia Symbian OS S60 5.0 (touchscreen) smartphones that lets artists showcase their work globally, and inform their audience of new shows, works, and more. Potential art buyers can use NokyArt to discover new artists by browsing the works of artists from around the world, and keep up with their latest achievements and other news. And both can do so without taking a step from their home or studio.

Install the NokyArt widget on your Nokia smartphone, and you can also opt to have it display on your homescreen. While that may be valuable real estate, doing so means you can launch NokyArt by simply tapping on the homescreen icon, rather than having to find the widget on your apps menu.

Launch NokyArt, and you are taken to an artist’s gallery. (I would have preferred starting on the indexed listing of artists, but…) Here’s the kind of thing you will see at launch…note that the artist’s name appears at the top of the screen:

The first icon on the top left takes you to the Artists index page. Here you will find an alphabetical listing of all artists in the NokyArt gallery. Currently, there are nearly 60 artists and photographers exhibiting more than 800 pictures. These artists work from all over the world, including Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, and the U.K.

To view a particular artist’s gallery, tap their name. For example, here I have tapped on the first artist, Anneke Cilon, simply because she is first. Here is the start of her gallery:

The icons along the top are mostly useful, though a few did not work properly for me. The useful icons include the one that is third from the left, which takes you to the artist’s website. Here, for example, is a view of the website of Anneke Cilon, the artist I chose above:

Another useful icon is third from the right, the face with a green plus sign. It takes you to the biography page of the artist whose gallery you are currently viewing. Here, for example, is the bio page for Anneke Cilon:

The second icon from the right — the familiar orange RSS icon — takes you to the artist’s news page. Here’s a look at the news page of Anneke Cilon:

You can also communicate a bit with the artists by rating their art on a scale of one to five stars:

Navigation on NokyArt is unusual and certainly not standard for the Nokia user experience. The arrows at the bottom take you to the next picture in the artist’s gallery. The icon in the upper right is supposed to take you to the next artist in the listing, but it didn’t work for me. And the second icon from the left, the image of the two pictures, is (I think) a zoom in/zoom out feature; I say ‘I think’ because I could not get it to work.

And how do you quit? The usual ‘X’ icon is nowhere to be found! On the Nokia N97 — the device I used for testing — you can exit and close NokyArt by pressing the device’s red ‘end call’ button. But NokyArt’s publisher urgently needs to add a quit/exit icon.

Another usability issue: The icon for switching between English and French text  is pretty much hidden. To find it, first tap on the blue question-mark icon. This takes you to a Help page. At the bottom of the Help page is a small round icon with graphics from the French and British flags. Next, tap this icon to toggle between the two languages.

From an artist’s perspective, NokyArt works differently. They must first pass through a selection process, which requires them to submit at least six works of art. Once accepted, they pay an annual fee of 20 euros.

NokyArt — at least now — is not a place for finding high-priced art from internationally known artists. Instead, it is a place for discovering new talent. Many of the artists with NokyArt galleries are based outside the big art centres of London, New York, and Paris. While some are quite accomplished, many are still working on their craft.

The NokyArt developers also operate an accompanying website. Here you will find, in both French and English, much of the same features on the widget, plus an FAQ page, discussion forum, and project updates.

NokyArt runs on Nokia S60 5.0 (touchscreen) devices, including the Nokia N97 and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, and you can view all text in either English or French.

NokyArt is available on Ovi Store, and it is free.