Artists take paintings to masses

RICHMOND, Va. -- In his sweltering studio on one of the hottest days of the year, artist Duane Keiser should be sweating, but he's smiling. He sold a painting today. And yesterday and the day before yesterday and the days before that going back 18 months. What's more, he's virtually certain to sell a painting tomorrow and all the tomorrows of the foreseeable future.

Keiser once was one of those artists lucky to sell a couple of paintings a year. Now he's something new: artist as blogger. Every day he makes a postcard-size oil painting of something he sees around town or of a still life he arranges here in his studio in the warehouse district of his hometown. Then he posts an image of the painting on his daily blog, DuaneKeiser.blogspot.com, under A Painting a Day.

You like it? Want it? Click on it.

Thousands have done so, on Keiser's blog and the blogs of scores of other mostly non-famous artists who make small original paintings nearly every day and sell them for as little as $100 each. It doesn't make them rich, but it allows them to make a living as an artist, and it could make some of them famous.

In the process, artist/bloggers such as Keiser are democratizing the art world, using the Internet to change the making and selling of art. Dealers and galleries, who command 50% commissions, no longer have exclusive control in defining who is emerging or successful.

Now artists can sell directly to consumers, using blogs or auction sites at prices more affordable to would-be collectors. The result: More people are making a living as artists, more people are buying art, and more art is selling at a wider spectrum of prices.

"This is a very exciting development," says New York art collector and corporate attorney Gregory Peterson, who already had a museum-quality art collection when he discovered Keiser's blog. Now he has a dozen of Keiser's paintings. "The entire method of collecting has radically changed."

But it's more than that. This is a confluence of trends:

*The blogosphere has doubled every six months for the past two years to 51.9 million blogs, according to blog tracker Technorati.

*Online art shopping has grown as a complement to gallery hopping and art-fair shopping.

*Interest has increased in original contemporary art as an inspiration for interior design.

*Acceptance has grown of original art for gifting.

"The Internet has created a new form of art galleries, and it has allowed artists to become independent entrepreneurs," says Peter Togel, an artist and co-owner of ArtByUs.com, a new art auction site. "The consumers of the art are people who have white walls and midsized incomes, who could never pay for a painting in a gallery but don't want to go to Wal-Mart to buy a poster."

So far, art dealers and galleries aren't paying much attention, and they're not really threatened.

"Traditional galleries are never going to go away. You'll always need them, but the days of them being the gatekeepers are over," says Keiser, 40, whose work has sold in New York galleries.

Keiser discovered the blogosphere in 2004, and it's not certain how many artists have joined him. But on Blogger.com, more than 1,500 blogs mention "painting-a-day," and 95 mention that in their self-describing tags on Technorati.

The idea of putting your art -- literature, poetry, music, video games, film, etc. -- on the Web for all to see isn't new, but it's easier to sell a painting than a poem.

"And the new thing about (the concept) is the serial aspect, that every day there's a new image, and you don't know what it's going to be," Keiser says.

That's one reason collector Peterson, 54, is a fan. "The Internet can provide something that no other medium can -- real-time drama, and that can be addictive."

Because making, selling, packing and shipping the small paintings takes only a few hours a day, the artist gets a steady stream of income for not much effort. If Keiser sells five paintings a week at an average of $250 each, for 48 weeks a year, that's $60,000. Plus, he has plenty of time to work on larger, more expensive paintings.

The Internet helps the artist reach millions more viewers than would come into galleries or, say, happen upon the artist painting on a street corner.

Another bonus: Artists and buyers can establish a personal relationship. "What I like is having that direct connection with the buyer, even if it's by e-mail," Keiser says.

The concept of Keiser's blog originated in 2001 after he painted a batch of small oils and wondered how to sell them. Galleries generally aren't interested in small works because the profit margin is so low.

So he threw a party in his studio and invited all his friends to "100 Paintings for $100." "They sold like gangbusters," he says. "And everyone had a great time."

He started posting small paintings on his website, e-mailed his friends every time he posted, and interest began to grow.

In December 2004, he launched his daily blog; soon, he was getting 50 e-mails a day, then 100. Top Web mag Boing Boing mentioned his blog; so did Yahoo.

"After that, it just exploded. I would post a painting, and someone in India would buy it within five minutes," he says.

Originally he sold them for $100 each. As the daily competition grew, he switched to auctions on eBay, which sent prices up to an average $250-$400 each, although a few have sold for double that or more.

These days, Keiser's blog gets hundreds of visitors a day. Nielsen BuzzMetrics, which tracks blogs based on their links by other bloggers, says Keiser's site manages a respectable ranking of 2,714 out of the top 10,000 blogs it profiles.

Meanwhile, scores of other artists, experienced or not, have started similar blogs. Some of them closely imitate Keiser's style, subjects and selling strategies.

Justin Clayton, 31, a former video game artist in Los Angeles, says he was inspired by Keiser to quit his day job last year to make small oil paintings for his blog, JustinsPaintings.com, which started in January. Like Keiser, he paints still lifes, a few portraits and some landscapes, such as a row of the tops of California palm trees. Nearly everything has sold, typically for $200-$300 on eBay auctions. He's thrilled -- and surprised.

"The Internet makes it possible for me or anyone to be an artist. Just the sheer numbers out there, there's bound to be someone in the world interested in your art," he says. "But how do you get people to go to your site? I'm constantly looking for new ways."

One way is publicity. The August edition of home magazine Domino showcased seven artist/bloggers, including Keiser and Clayton, in a feature on how to decorate on a budget. After that, "I was getting 550 visitors to the site a day," compared with the usual 125 to 200, Clayton says.

In February, when The New York Times ran a small story about a website called Postcard from Provence, British artist Julian Merrow-Smith had 40 small oils of the countryside around his Provencal farmhouse that hadn't sold since he started his painting-a-day blog, shiftinglight.com.

The day of the article, "we sold everything in about five minutes," Merrow-Smith says. "I have a database of 3,000 people, and it's growing by 30 or 40 people a day."

Merrow-Smith, also inspired by Keiser, sells his still lifes and landscapes from his blog for $120 each, and now dealers have come sniffing. "It's a little embarrassing," he says. "I don't need them."

Still, for most dealers, gallery owners and museum curators, artist/bloggers are just not worth their interest.

"Most don't look like anything special," says Howard Rehs, co-owner of Rehs Galleries in New York. Dealers work with buyers "who are looking to build collections that have some relevance, importance or meaning." The bloggers are just "a little blip in the art world, something that will fill a niche for those people who want to buy something real and not just a poster."

Maybe, but it's a niche that is growing. People such as Togel of ArtByUs.com see the artists' roles almost as educators for art-buying neophytes. Buyers "can make their mistakes; they can grow, learn what is good, what isn't, what they like, don't like," he says. "After you bring art to the masses, eventually some of them are going to go to galleries to buy."

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