How the internet helped an artist get one of his paintings licensed to appear in a textbook!

Jay Zuckerman is an artist. He has always been passionate about art, and he is gifted at taking ideas and stories and turning them into stunning pictures. Although he’s free to exhibit and sell his work locally, of course, he doesn’t have to worry about whose gallery wants to show his work or what shop might want to stock or consign his pieces. The whole web is his gallery, and he can show or sell his art to anyone on the planet any time of day or night.

That’s cool, and you probably even know some people who use the web to display and sell various items, but this is where his story gets really awesome. One day last year, a textbook publisher, John Wiley & Sons Canada, found Jay’s Stream of Consciousness painting on Google image search and contacted him out of the blue! They wanted to use the painting as an illustration in a textbook, Visualizing Psychology Canadian Edition. After some negotiation, the publisher and Jay worked out a licensing deal for their use of his painting in publishing their first edition.

This is just one example of how Jay is using the amazing reach of the internet to make a living from his art. He says that in one fashion or another, practically all of his work right now is coming from the internet! Check out Jay Zuck’s website and you can see how he uses a blog to build a community around talking about his art and art-related subjects, plus he has links to his portfolio and even a place to commission him to do some work for you. My favorite statement on the Commissions tab is, “I look forward to helping you unleash your imagination and vision on to the world.” If that isn’t a compelling call to action, I don’t know what is!