Anybody know how to properly photograph paintings??

First technique:

Depending on the size of the painting,
you need at minimum two lights.
You can use either strobes
or incandescent lights in reflectors 

Each light is placed 45 degrees from the surface of the paining,
and 90 degrees to each other. 

If the painting is large,
you may need to put two or more on each side
in order to even out the light.

Use a tripod for the camera.

That should get you through 90 percent of situations.

Occasionally you may need to polarize the light source
and the camera in order to remove glare from the surface of the painting.
In those situations, you place polarizing filters over each light
and orient them in the same vertical or horizontal axis.
Then you filter the lens with a polarizer and orient it 90 degrees opposite to the light source. 

That's the usual setup for photographing paintings.

Second technique:

Another cheaper alternative is to photograph the painting outdoors.
Choose a cloudy day, and place the painting in the shade.
That will provide an even light over the painting surface.

You can also use white foam core
or even just a white sheet 
to kick in some additional reflected light onto the surface. 
Place one sheet of foam core or one sheet on each side of the painting.
Again, try to aim for a 45 degree angle from the surface of the paining. 

With either technique:

The trick with photographing paintings is to realize that
if the artist used an impasto technique 
(whereby the paint is laid on heavily and the surface has texture)
then you're really photographing a three diminutional object rather than a two dimensional one. 
So you want to be careful with your lighting in order to bring out the
three dimensional aspect of the painting. 

You might also want to add a color chart or a gray card next to the painting
so that you can later color correct to the color chart or gray card.
That will then render the color of the painting accurately. 

That's absolutely right.

You can also use it as a reference for balancing the color temperature later.
The Macbeth type color charts are best,
but a good old 18percent gray card will work nearly as well. 

Then when you go into photoshop,
you can balance the color temperature off the card.
The correct colors of the painting should then fall into place. 

I reread your OP.

If the artist lives near peby,
he should think about taking his work to him and have it done right.

If he is using the images to try to get into a gallery,
it might benefit him to invest in high quality reproductions of his work. 

I'm an artist, and all the suggestions above are great but a bit complicated - it doesn't have to be that hard. 

The main thing is that the images need to appear professional for a gallery - crop out the background (with a digital camera, it doesn't really matter what the background is), square up the paintings in photoshop, make sure there is NO glare on the brushstrokes, make sure the frame is NOT showing in the image. I use fancy lights and polarizers now, but I used to just set up the paintings in a part of my house where there was diffuse light so there would  be no glare, and shoot with a tripod. Used to work well to set them up on a chair inside the garage (far back with no direct sunlight on them). Sometimes it helps to shoot at a *slight* angle (i.e. camera a bit higher than the center of the painting) to get rid of glare, then fix the perspective in photoshop. NO flash.

Feel free to pm me if you have any questions. I'm sure he doesn't want to pay a pro $50 per painting if he's at the seeking gallery representation stage, so do some trial and error and I'm sure you can both come up with some good images