I have become inspired by something (a movement?) called “A Painting a Day.”
The brain child of Duane Keiser, “A Painting a Day” is a group of independent artists who have made the commitment to paint one painting a day. They usually have a Blog, a website, and an online store where people can either bid on each days painting or buy it outright.
(Click here for a USA Today Article about Keiser.)
The paintings are small, usually postcard size, of excellent quality, and priced so just about anyone who wants to start collecting original art can do so. Keiser spends a few hours a day working on a painting. They paintings go on sale at $100 and can go much higher by the time bidding stops. Generally, the artists don’t get rich, but the sales can put a little cushion into life.
I am happy for the inspiration the whole project has awakened in me. Here’s a way I can do art and still keep the security of my day job.
The inspiration has yet another aspect which was articulated for me by a blogger, Chuck Tanowitz, at his sight, “Media Metamorphosis.” Chuck’s point is this:
I'm a public relations and marketing professional working on the edge of old and new media, watching them collide. Life is always more interesting at the junctions and that’s where we are today.
Everything we know about media is about to change: how we receive information, who produces it, how we pay for it, even when we get it. This revolution will be blogged, podcasted and communicated in ways we haven’t even thought about yet. …people sitting in their homes have the power to reach the world. In this new world it’s the stories that will win.
Yes, I like that sentiment, especially, "Life is always more interesting at the junctions..."
Or, to quote from the article on Keiser in USA Today, “This is a very exciting development…The entire method of [art] collecting has radically changed."
So, I am working towards this. Getting all the ducks lined up.
Duck, duck, GOOSE!
I’ll be going step, by step. First step being sharing a new painting I did last night after work. I call it “For Marcha” because I turned it into a print for a colleague here at work to whom I owe a debt of gratitude.
The background image is from an X-ray film created in an old DNA sequencing experiment. We have a whole box of such films that are just collecting dust. I went through a handful and selected some interesting patterns.
The idea for using DNA sequencing films came from a friend’s comment as she viewed my painting “Blocks 1” (Check it out at Flickr). Being a linguist she just stared and stared, arguing all the little blocks had to be encoding something, she called it a Rosetta Stone.
Well, that’s just what these DNA sequencing films actually do.
In the process of turning the X-ray film into a painting, I had the idea that I could offer prints - prints that were customized with a dedication as I signed them, if the purchaser wanted to gift them… prints that I can make right in my home studio from paintings that are too small to sell as originals.
In fact, I had lots of ideas from this one painting.
Bright ideas kept me lying awake in bed last night with new images and techniques to try, all floating in my head.
Ahh… Inspiration. It makes you really have to exhale!
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