Artist Keith Jensen doesn\u2019t like the business side of art, so he wanted to find a way to keep it fun.<\/p>\n
The solution: Give away his creations \u2013 well, just for the next year, anyway.<\/p>\n
The University of Central Florida graduate and former communication adjunct now lives in New York City, but is the creative art director for a Florida company, which brings him back\u00a0to Orlando each month.<\/p>\n
He recently started leaving original pieces of artwork around New York for passersby to find. Signs attached to the canvases say: “Free art. If having this art will make your day better, then it’s yours.”<\/p>\n
At UCF, Jensen earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in business and a master\u2019s in mass communication. In\u00a02004, he\u00a0started teaching classes in public speaking, and later in advertising and public relations for a few years.<\/p>\n
He was always interested in the creative aspects of advertising and doodling, but wasn\u2019t serious about art until last year when a friend asked him to use paint pens to give his Jet Ski some more flair.<\/p>\n
Jensen said he discovered his long-dormant skill and started painting on other vehicles and canvases.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was something I had never tapped into earlier,\u201d he said. \u201cNow it\u2019s a fun thing for me. People offered to buy them, but it was always an awkward situation to come up with a price. So I decided to give away the paintings.\u201d<\/p>\n
So far he has set out a handful of paintings of celebrities, which he said were picked up by people within a couple minutes after seeing the \u201cFree Art\u201d sign on them.<\/p>\n
He said he plans to leave one or two paintings each week around New York, and will set out a couple in Orlando when he visits next week. The artist said he also drops hints on his Twitter account about where the paintings are hidden.<\/p>\n
“For such a creative and light-hearted industry, art catches a stuffy stigma,\u201d Jensen said. \u201cArt should be about making people feel something when they see it on their wall \u2013 and what better feeling is there than getting something valuable for free.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Artist Keith Jensen doesn\u2019t like the business side of art, so he wanted to find a way to keep it fun. The solution: Give away his creations \u2013 well, just for the next year, anyway. The University of Central Florida graduate and former communication adjunct now lives in New York City, but is the creative art director for a Florida…","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":39396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"template-twocol.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"lazy_load_responsive_images_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"tu_author":[],"class_list":["post-39395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts"],"yoast_head":"\n