Internet can sometimes be incredible. All the power of the world wide network has just shown yesterday its amazing power. A guy from Australia left a comment on my blog. He loved my Gordon Gecko painting and even put the picture and a link on his website ! Nothing unusual so far, but the guy is an artist himself and has invented some artistic concepts involving the hard notion of valueing art from the very beginning of its creation… I felt very much concerned by his artistic approach for two reasons : first, I am myself a man of financial markets (I am running two websites about stocks trading : sequoiatradingclub.com and and lavoiedutrade.com) as I work in a Corporate Investment Bank. Second, I have been thinking about a way to monetize art for one or two years as well.
So that guy is Anthony White. His concept, like all great ideas is basically “stupid like the moon” as we say in France. And like one of my friend always says, KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). He paints single paintings showing money digits (eg. $1) and sells them.
As surprising as it is, it sells at a tremendous pace worldwide.
Remember that young brit guy who sold pixels on internet (milliondollarhomepage.com) ? He became a millionnaire in 9 months (1$ a pixel). Yeah, Millionnaire. I don’t know if Anthony White is already a millionnaire but he certainly took the right path to it.
So what’s the point about all of this ? Well, first I am glad that somebody appreciates my work and my art some 10.000 kms (or so) away from here. Yeah, it flatters ego… Second, I did myself had a similar idea two years ago. Painting stock markets related art has been a desire for 1 or 2 years. I kept maturing the idea without getting started even though I saw very similar artistic concepts here and there :
http://www.moneyart.org (a company who created the Bank of International Money Art)
Tom Moran’s art at Tommoran.net ( a former trader who paints stockmarkets abstracts)
Mark Wagner’s art at smokeinmydreams.com (an artist who makes collages with real pieces of dollar bills)
Even if I thought the concepts are innovative, I am not a fan of contemporary art and I preferred starting some more academic painting (more rewarding from an artistic point of view, in my humble opinion). But creating some new art concept can be rewarding too. Both artistically and financially (well, if paintings sell of course…)
But now, all of this made me think of it twice. I do not wish to give up my painting work on Fantasy Art but stocktrading is a great inspiration for me and I wish to give it a try. Today at the lunch time, I wrote down several ideas I got 2 years ago and slightly improved them. I wish to start a series of innovative contemporary art paintings directly inspired from trading. I will start with a first series of 8 paintings to give a start. Today’s improvement ideas will follow on the next series if success is encountered…
Oh ! and by the way, if you got here from Anthony’s site, please leave a comment. And if you are interested in buying the Gordon Gecko painting. Well, it is not for sale, right now. But my attachment to that painting could be diluted in dollars… 😉 so you can email me at sequoia @ sequoiatradingclub.com
Cédric Mnich's Art Gallery 