A couple of days ago, I posted the work of Duane Keiser. I came across him while scanning through some of Robert Henri's paintings. In other words, I went off on a tangent! Never hesitate to do this. You can't begin to predict where you will find yourself. Pun intended...
Anyway, I discovered that Duane Keiser is a successful artist, quite successful, and also known as the guy who makes and sells "a painting a day." He started this series of small paintings, usually measuring about 6" or 7" in their largest dimension, in 2004, and continued for about a year and a half before slowing down. And he is still doing it, just not every day. Keiser started the project because he realized in the early 2000s that the internet was the gallery of the future. There is an interesting article at the Huffington Post. (Click on the image of his Krispy Kreme donut painting to go there. Note the actual model for the painting resides on the lid of a donut box to the left of the easel.)
"My 'A Painting a Day' blog is a series of observations pulled from the onrush of the everyday. It consists of postcard-sized paintings of the places, people and things in my life. My subject matter tends to be those fragmentary passages that reside within the mundane-- the in-between spaces of our lives that we see but often do not notice. For me, these paintings are about the pleasure of seeing; of being cognizant of the world around me and pushing to find an alchemy between the paint, my subject and the moment. I view each piece as being part of a single, ongoing work."
He sells this work via eBay, which he says has proven to be an efficient, secure and transparent auction system for his collectors. Bidding starts at $100 and prices have ranged from $100 to $3,750 per painting. Here is a little slide show of his primarily postcard sized "Painting a Day" pieces:
"The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."--Albert Einstein
I bet you've already guessed where this is going
Keiser would be the first to tell you that not all of his paintings are masterpieces. Sometimes they are just studies that he views as a part of a progression, a process that he is working on or working out. Sometimes the small pieces become the large ones. For example, he painted a small chocolate donut and sold it on eBay long before he was inspired to paint "Krispy Kreme."
Maybe for Keiser his small daily paintings are like your journal entries? What if you made such fabulous journal entries, however, that you could tear them out and sell them on eBay?!?!?!
Now, I realize that this goes against at least two tenets I have pounded into your heads since day one of our writing group: Do NOT edit yourself, and do NOT tear pages out of your journal! But you also know that I truly believe that rules are made only to be broken. If I thought I could write a poem every day and sell it on eBay, I would be on my way to Office Depot to buy a box of envelopes right now!