I'VE fancied owning a piece of actual, genuine art for a while now. The charms of the exhibition poster pale next to the thick impasto and vibrant colours of the real thing. So I’ve come to Old Granada Studios, where the Buy Art Fair is being held, to get the low-down on becoming a collector from CEO Thom Hetherington.

This is the art that will be in the Whitworth a hundred years from now

As I step into the studios, the buzz is palpable. Gallerists stand back and tweak frames just so; the air is thick with the smell of oils and pastels. A man wanders around with a table and tells me – ‘I’m wandering around with a table!’ He seems so unusually delighted by this I wonder if it is a canny piece of performance art. But then I realise that something so wilfully esoteric is not the Buy Art Fair’s thing at all. The pieces going up around me are wonderful in their variety – edgy urban pieces popping from the walls, delicate flower paintings, sombre landscapes and wistful abstracts – but none suffer from being overly obscure.

Thom confirms this impression, “The Buy Art Fair showcases a broad range of styles at broad range of prices, but they are all accessible, lovely work that doesn’t need a narrative to explain it. It’s immediate,” he says.

As he shows me round the stands, it’s clear Thom is as excited by the fair today as he was at its inception eight years ago. Every stand has something that gets him all enthusiastic, whether it’s a gallery he has personally bought from himself or a new face on the scene he is looking forward to getting to know.

Buy Art Fair 2015 launch eventBuy Art Fair 2015 launch event

While in the main the art is accessible (between £50 to £5000+), true to the idea of having something for everyone, there is the edgier Manchester Contemporary section of the fair. Thom explains, “The Manchester Contemporary is a fair within a fair. It’s about critically engaged art, galleries entirely focused on artist development and they work with major arts commentators, arts writers, public institutions, major collections. This is the art that will be in the Whitworth a hundred years from now. It’s part of an international dialogue that is really relevant and resonant. It tends to be a bit more challenging, a bit more difficult; the sort of stuff that people could look at and say, ‘That’s art?’ But when I take my kids to the City art gallery and we see the pre-Raphaelites with their gilt frames, they say ‘This is proper art’, but at the time it was seen as insane, dangerous stuff and now we see it as traditional, beautiful art, so it’s all a matter of perspective. Manchester Contemporary is all about people doing edgy, difficult things that may become the significant art of the day.

“This year we’ve also got stands for big institutions like the Hepworth and the Whitworth. They create these phenomenal exhibitions with these world-class artists that everybody goes to, and now they come here to sell prints, limited editions that are quite valuable. They are having to get out there and be a bit more commercial. I know people who come and buy a print from them instead of getting an ISA. They appreciate in value in the same way, if not better, and they’ve got something they love to look at every day."

.The hang'n'try before-you-buy in the Artists' Studio

Under Thom’s animated guidance I also get to see more new additions to this year’s fair – the dedicated artists’ studio, where artists sell independently of galleries; the room sets designed by No Chintz, where you can hang your chosen artwork above a sofa or coffee table to get a feel for how the piece will work in a home setting, and the Hot Bed Press workshop where you can have a go at making your own screenprint. It’s fun details like this which make the Buy Art Fair more of a cultural event than just a buying opportunity.

But Thom gets serious when it comes to talking about why he set up the fair in the first place, “We’ve had this incredible cultural shift in Manchester with the Whitworth and the Factory and HOME, all these wonderful places to see art and still too few places to buy it, and if Manchester wants to be taken seriously as an international arts city then there has to be an arts market too.

“There is no fair outside London that pulls together this set of galleries. The entire idea is for people in the North to have somewhere to come and buy art, which up until now has been surprisingly difficult. But also to attract buyers on a national and international scale - we are now having people coming to Manchester to buy, so it’s for the people of Manchester but it’s also positioning Manchester as a serious place art destination.

“The appetite for art was always there, the potential just needed to be unlocked. When we launched this, everyone said, there’s no appetite, people don’t buy art in Manchester that’s why there are no galleries. To which I said, no, it’s because there are no galleries, that’s why people don’t buy art.

“We are the only art fair in the country where you can take someone who has never bought a piece of art before, to a regular buyer to collectors and creators and there will be something for everyone. That egalitarian cross-pollination is quite a Mancunian thing.”

On that note, I start seriously thinking about which piece I’m going to start my own art collection with. Will it be the delicate etching of a tree, or the majestic seascape I spotted? I ask Thom for his advice to the first-time buyer:

“If you like it, if you can afford it, then buy it. Don’t overthink it, don’t worry what anyone else will think of it, just find a piece you like then buy it,” he says.

As simple as that really. Watch out Saatchi, here I come.

The Buy Art Fair runs from Thursday 24 to Sunday 27 September.

For further information and to register for free tickets, visit buyartfair.co.uk /themanchestercontemporary.com.

Follow @buyartfair and @mancontemporary.