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Art
Business News Magazine
December 2007
One of my paintings was featured in an
article called "Small Wonders," about the hot market for
small original artwork. Michah Condon, artist & creator
of the Daily Painters website (which I am a member of), was
quoted in the article & my painting of "2 Red Pears"
was posted along with it.
“Two Pears,” a 5-x-5-inch oil on paper by Elizabeth Fraser,
is one of many miniature pieces created daily and posted
on www.dailypainters.com.
Click HERE to read the
article.
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December 13th, 2007
6:32 PM Eastern
Rainbow;
the one eyed dog
by Laura Ingle
Fox News, Laura's Lowdown
Meet Rainbow, the one eyed dog. A few days ago, I blogged
about my good friend Rock n’ Roll Al having a birthday, and
I have been dying to tell you what I got him for his
present!
He has had his dog Rainbow for 15-years now. She is a black
shepherd lab mix, maybe a little bit of wolf, and”a little
bit of crazy” in her (that’s what Al says) Rainbow lost her
left eye in 2004 when she had glaucoma and a cataract at
the same time. It was removed, sewn up, and she’s been
winking at people ever since!
Rock n’ Roll Al ADORES this dog, and I wanted to do
something special involving her for his gift. I was surfing
the net a few months ago, and came upon an artist named
Elizabeth Fraser in Portland, Maine who specializes in pet
portraits, and once I clicked on the link, I couldn’t
believe how great her paintings were! www.paintsquared.com
I started emailing back and forth with Elizabeth, to try to
get her the very best picture of Rainbow so she could work
her magic - the problem is, Rainbow doesn’t like to have
her picture taken, so there are only a few in existence,
and most are from far away. I told Al I was going to blog
about Rainbow and needed some pictures of her (my trick to
get some photos) and he sent me some on email, but none
were a close up of Rainbow’s face. Then… my amazingly
talented boyfriend thought of a way to get the shot.
When we were alone with Rainbow, he took a Starbucks handle
bag, cut a hole out in the bottom of it, slipped the camera
in it, turned off the flash (that’s what she hates, and is
scared of) and then put a treat inside the bag so she would
come up close and sniff it. And it worked! We got the shot,
Rainbow didn’t get spooked, and a commissioned piece of art
was in the works for Rock n’ Roll Al’s birthday.
Here’s the final product…..
Don’t you just love it? Thank you Elizabeth for making such
a great likeness of “the girl”!
This rocks!
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The USA Today Online Gift Guide, 12-5-2007
click HERE to read the gift
guide
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American Art Collector November 2007
One
of my daily paintings is featured on the
www.DailyPainters.com
advertisement
in this month's issue. Can you spot me??
I'm the Winter Churches on the 2nd row from the bottom, 2nd
one in. :-)
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POPSUGAR.COM
Commissioning
a Painting...of Your Dog Mon, 10/08/2007 - 5:58am by
casasugar
Sometimes I worry about walking that fine line between
being a responsible pet owner and an obsessive pet owner.
("Your dog is wearing a backpack," my sister recently
observed.) Still, that concern didn't deter me from
commissioning a painting of my dog, Ozzie. Portland, Maine,
artist Elizabeth Fraser, whose work I'd found on Etsy,
started out with a photo of Ozzie, and two weeks later, the
painting arrived in the mail.
The
painting's diminutive size, at at only 5x5 inches, made me
feel like less of a weirdo for getting my pet's portrait
commissioned. But as more of my friends saw the final
result (framed and placed on my fireplace mantel) they
stopped thinking that I was slightly nutty and began to
realize that I was on to something really cool.
Fraser, who works primarily in oils, was a delight to work
with, and I thought that $75 was a major steal for an
original piece of artwork of my pet.
What do you think? Would you get artwork commissioned of
your pet?
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The Maine SWITCH
A painting a day
Elizabeth Fraser aims for 8
squared each week
By
Avery Yale Kamila
2007-05-22
Paint Squared Paintings
"I
Think They're Home" • "Nighttime Falls Over Casco Bay" •
"Mostly Eaten Watermelon"
It’s been a little more than a
year, and Elizabeth Fraser continues to crank out 8
paintings a week. The Munjoy Hill artist is part of the
small world of painters who create work daily and sell them
to the highest bidder on eBay. She took her inspiration
from Duane Keiser, a Virginia artist who pioneered this
eBay painting trend in 2004.
“It’s rare that I miss a day,” says Fraser, 35, noting that
1 day a week she paints 2 pieces. “I’ve probably missed 5
since I started.”
Each of her works is a 5-inch by 5-inch square, and she
paints with oil on mat board. The size combined with the
frequency led to the title of her project: “Paint Squared,
8 Days a Week.”
Using bold brush strokes and rich splashes of color, she
makes each piece an eye-catching gem that captures a small
slice of Maine. Her subject matter is wide-ranging,
including buildings, landscapes and a variety of pet
portraits.
“I get inspired by my walks on the Prom, food in the
kitchen and the travels I’ve taken,” Fraser says. She adds
that her pet portraits have been particularly popular,
leading to a number of commissions.
So far, she’s created 550 paintings and sold 500 of them.
The bidding starts at $60, and Fraser said on average the
works sell for around $75, with an occasional piece selling
for more than $250.
You can view and bid on her works online at
www.paintsquared.com. Fraser’s work also is on display
until the end of the month at Casco Bay Frames, and during
each First Friday Art Walk she opens her studio at 81
Congress Street (between the Blue Spoon and The Front
Room).
“I can’t imagine not doing this,” she says.
Which means her fans can count on many more square meals of
art.
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Paint Squared goes International April 2007:
12
of my Paint Squared paintings were on display in Archangel,
Russia for a week long exhibit,
"Presenting
America and American Life"
in April. They will also be on display during "City Days"
in June in Archangel. a BIG thank you to Dennis Marrotte
& the Archangel Steering Committee for including me in
this wonderful international event--what an honor!
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Elizabeth's Daily Paintings mentioned in the NEW YORK
TIMES, August 31, 2006
CLICK here to read it at the Times website
... or scroll down:
"EVERYDAY SCENES, Painted Every
Day,"
Article by Michelle
Slatalla
Online Shopper
Everyday
Scenes, Painted Every Day
By MICHELLE
SLATALLA
Published:
August 31, 2006
NICK JAINSCHIGG was having a terrible time last week trying
to paint a pink rose in 30 minutes. One day he said the
petals looked thick as icing, and the next he just couldn’t
get the bud texture right.
“Despite my best intentions, the image of a rose on a white
background will always look like a greeting card,” he wrote
in despair.
But Mr. Jainschigg refused to give up. And as he used
different techniques — he tried big, floppy brushstrokes,
he tried painting at twilight, he even changed the
background to a flat chalky gray — I found myself rooting
for him. And for the rose.
I was following his progress by making frequent visits
to
nickjainschigg.org, the Web site where he
posts results of his efforts to complete a tiny
postcard-size painting every day. Each afternoon, I
clicked on his newest thumbnail image, hoping to see a
masterpiece.
Why did I care? There were several reasons, actually, the
most obvious being the empty space on the wall in the
hallway that leads to my kitchen. Mr. Jainschigg is one of
a growing number of artists who in the last few months have
starting selling one-a-day creations online. One of his
roses could look great on my wall.
Three might look even better. And suddenly, thanks to the
one-a-day art movement, buying three original oil paintings
is not a budget-busting proposition. Mr. Jainschigg, for
instance, sells his small paintings for $100.
But beyond my instinctive shopper’s impulse to find a
bargain, I was also excited to be witnessing yet another
example of how the Internet has the power to upset old
ideas and reshape retail markets.
Sites like
acollageaday.blogspot.com
(where Randel
Plowman sells his 4-inch-by-4-inch collages for $25)
and
dailypaintings.com (where Elin Pendleton has
posted her acrylic and oil paintings for prices as low
as $100) remove the middleman from the transaction,
connecting artists directly to collectors.
The Internet changes things fast. By most accounts, the
roots of the painting-a-day movement reach back only as far
as December 2004, when a painter named Duane Keiser, who
also is an adjunct professor at the University of Richmond
in Virginia, decided to test his discipline by challenging
himself to post a new creation every day on his site
at
duanekeiser.blogspot.com.
“I wanted to make a ritual for myself, to complete a
painting in one day, every day, without any excuses,” Mr.
Keiser said in a phone interview last week. “I liked the
diary aspect of it, that it was like putting a time stamp
on a painting. When it goes up on the blog, I know it
happened on this day.”
Mr. Keiser’s experiment soon attracted the attention
of
boingboing.net, a popular blog that
identifies online trends.
“After somebody wrote a little blurb about me for
Boingboing, the whole thing just spread like, well, it was
unbelievable,” Mr. Keiser said. “I would wake up in the
morning and paint, say, an egg, and post it, and then some
guy in India would e-mail me and it was breathtaking to
realize that within a few minutes of my finishing a
painting, people everywhere in the world were looking at
it.”
Previously, Mr. Keiser sold most of his work through
traditional brick-and-mortar galleries. “But this has
allowed me the flexibility to not worry about whether a
gallery will accept me,” he said.
Now there are plenty of other artists are doing the same
thing. At
paintingadayproject.blogspot.com,
for instance, Jan Blencowe posts what she calls “small,
simple still life paintings of common objects.”
The artist Elizabeth Fraser sells her paintings on eBay,
starting at $60; her work is online at
web.mac.com/champart/iWeb.
At some painting-a-day Web sites such as
justinspaintings.com and
shiftinglight.com, I could subscribe to
mailing lists; now I receive e-mail alerts the moment a
new painting-a-day is posted.
There was a time when Mr. Keiser’s daily artworks sold for
as little as $100 on his site. But since Domino magazine
anointed him “the godfather of these blogs” in an article
published in July, things have changed.
These days, he auctions his painting-a-day work at eBay,
where last week a 5-inch-by-5-inch painting of a plate
decorated with a crab got 12 bids before selling for $265.
As of yesterday, a 5-inch-by-4-inch painting of a rushing
river had 18 bids, and was up to $380.
But eBay frenzies turn me off. I’ve lived through too many
of them.
I can remember, for example, when prices for milk-green
Depression glass coffee cups were rising by the day as
collectors who once were at the mercy of local flea
markets’ limited inventory suddenly discovered the novelty
of finding a world’s worth of collectibles at eBay.
I’m one of those people who overbid on a stack of chipped
saucers. Now I look at them in the pantry and I feel the
same kind of vague embarrassment that may overwhelm someone
who stumbles across a Chia Pet in the attic.
Will the painting-a-day frenzy last? Or is it merely the
fleeting symptom of a new Internet trend? In recent weeks,
Mr. Jainschigg has sold the vast majority of the 413
painting-a-day works he posted during the last 15 months.
One of his biggest challenges now, he said, is not to cave
in to the temptation to create work solely for the sake of
selling it.
“All of a sudden, I realize, there are people looking over
my shoulder,” Mr. Jainschigg said. “But although I do paint
some fun stuff like little pretty landscapes, the
occasional stuffed animal or a bug, I like to paint what
I’m trying to learn. I was doing study after study of
skeletons for a while when I was trying to master anatomy.”
Most of his paintings of skeletons and skulls are still for
sale.
Last week, he warned his audience that he was painting his
last rose for now. “This one, the final bud for the time
being, was by way of declaring victory and going home,” he
wrote.
Did I want to hang it on my wall? I wasn’t sure. Luckily,
he’ll have something new for me to consider tomorrow.
E-mail:
Slatalla@nytimes.com.
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Elizabeth
mentioned in Port City Life, Summer 2006
