Susan, what a great note about the Facebook thing! It’s been on my to-do list for ages, but haven’t gotten to it. Actually, this topic begs for its own blog post for further discussion - think I’ll do that right now.

I guess I haven’t bought into the Daily Painting idea either. I like a bit of planning when I’m approaching any painting, and if I were to try to do a painting a day (or 2-3 small things a week) I’d only be prepping and painting, not getting any business done. Doesn’t make me excited.

Daily painting seems to be working well for several people I know. There are two approaches that I’ve noted in that arena. One is to do a small painting every day, in addition to regular work. The other is to keep several paintings going at once and simply put one up for sale each day. With the former, the general trend seems to be something like 5×7 or 6×6, etc. at $100 or less. Not bad if you can sell a few each week. I have noticed that some artists tend to find a particular subject that moves and stay with it. Probably a good idea for that kind of venue. The latter allows more freedom, I think, because you can work on several pieces as you like. To approach it this way, you’d probably want to have several finished pieces at the beginning, to give yourself a cushion. One advantage to both of these is that you dont have to frame the work.

There are some really good artists making a living this way. I’ve purchased work from a couple myself.

On the contrary side, an artist friend argues that this tack can hurt the value of one’s work in the long run. His theory is that, by offering “production work” through an outlet like eBay or Etsy, the incentive to purchase through galleries is reduced. Over the long haul, as more artists move that direction, the number of galleries might shrink, or disappear altogether in some areas. Also, the motivation for personal development might diminish as demand for a particular subject matter grows.

My personal viewpoint is that each artist must make career decisions based on personal goals and circumstances. For example, I’m sitting here with a dozen or so paintings lying around my studio and no place to show them. I dont want to get into the art market scene and I’m really awful about updating anything on the internet. (It’s a discipline thing.) So my best bet is probably to find a gallery somewhere that can get excited about my work and start moving it. Before I can do that, though, I’d like to have a dozen or so more. I’m thinking about Spring or early Summer. We’ll see.

I do like Ed Terpening’s work. He’s formed a plein air group on Facebook. You might check it out. I cant remember the name of it right now.