An Itty-Bitty Love Story

Because everyone should have original art

Many years ago, when this century was young, I sold greeting cards with original watercolor paintings on them. After a few years, when everyone’s auntie got email, they stopped selling.

At the time, I was also making and selling collages in small, square frames. The frames came with nice thick mats, which I was setting aside because I didn’t need them.

I was working with wet-in-wet watercolor, which is tough to control and even more difficult to salvage if you make a mistake, so I had piles of failed paintings. One day, probably around 2007 or so, I came up with the idea of putting the nice bits of my unsuccessful watercolors in the little 5x5 inch mats.

I assembled maybe ten of them, labeled them “Itty-Bitty Paintings” and sold them for $2 each at the Downtown Holiday Market in DC. I sold out in no time, so I made more. It seemed that, simply by putting my mistakes in mats, I had transformed them from scraps of paper to pieces of art. They might cost the same as a painted greeting card, but somehow the “frame” elevated them into the category of real paintings. Then I ran out of the nice little mats that came with the frames.

Mitochondria, vibrio bacteria, and various other microbes wait for their big moment

That might have been the end of it, but I decided to see if I could find someone to cut little mats for me. As it turns out, it’s a terrible deal to get 10 small mats cut, but a pretty good deal to get 300. And thus, tiny watercolors in 5-inch mats became a mainstay of my art practice and my business. I really have no idea how many Itty-Bitty Paintings I’ve sold since then, but it’s well up in the thousands.

Now if this were a classic business success story, I would be telling you how I came up with a way to make Itty-Bitty Paintings in under a minute at a cost of 12 cents each, and how I sat back and watched the money roll in.

And if this were a classic art success story, I would be telling you how I raised the prices of Itty-Bitty Paintings from $2 to $2,000 each, and how I sat back and watched the money and critical acclaim roll in.

But this is a Michele Banks story, so it’s more about how I started doing something almost by accident, kept at it, and gradually discovered something about the kind of artist I want to be.

A big box of neuron paintings for a neuroscience conference, and a happy customer at a microbiology meeting

Once I decided to start making more Itty-Bitties, I had to put a little more work into the art. No matter how hopeless a painter I was, I wasn’t generating enough mistakes to fill hundreds of mats. So I started, as I usually do, with cell division, painting various phases of mitosis. I sold them at shows for $5 each, figuring that people would buy a set of 4. Alas, I was wrong. Everyone wanted the middle two phases (anaphase and telophase), where the most obvious dividing action was happening, and I was left with lots of prophase and cytokinesis paintings. So I branched out into other areas of biology, painting little bacteria, viruses, mitochondria and DNA gels. I also came up with kitty microbes, fluffy little wet-watercolor cats with flagellate tails, and later, lab mice. The first time I showed my art at the Society for Neuroscience meeting, I made 100 Itty-Bitty neuron paintings and sold them all the first day.

Over the years, many other artists (and even some customers) have told me I should charge more for the Itty-Bitty paintings, but I resisted, partly for practical reasons and partly for philosophical ones. The practical reason was that they sold well at that price, and they often saved the day at festivals where people were just not buying anything over $50. The philosophical reason is that I think all people should have original art.

Gel electrophoresis, clostridium, and phages are all fine subjects for art

The world is full of cheap reproductions. That’s not entirely a bad thing – I have a few prints on my walls of things I saw at museums and loved so much I wanted to live with them. But there’s something deeper and richer about having the only one of something. A one-of-a-kind, unique piece, with its delightful imperfections. If I could provide that at a price affordable to almost everyone, why wouldn’t I?

Many people find me at every art show or science meeting, looking to add to their collections of tiny science art. Some start with Itty-Bitty paintings and then graduate to larger works. Some buy a handful to give as gifts. One used my mouse watercolors to decorate her cat’s house. Many spend a long time pulling together the perfect trio or quartet of tiny art for a small space. I love that.

I sold Itty-Bitty paintings for $5 each for many years, until the day a festival customer perused my larger work, checked the prices, and then piled up 10 Itty-Bitties instead. By the next festival, I had raised the price to $10.

The momentous day in 2022 when the price increased from $5 to $10

However, because I am a stubborn artist and not a canny businesswoman, I decided that for $10, I should make better paintings. And I did: the Itty-Bitties I sell now are much more artistic and detailed than the ones I was selling 10 years ago. Given inflation, they still cost about the same as a large lemonade at an art festival.

Itty-Bitty Algorithm paintings joined the lineup in 2024

I don’t sell Itty-Bitty paintings online, because it’s too much effort to photograph, describe, and keep track of dozens of unique little pieces, much less ship them “for free.” So if you want one, or several, you’ll have to find me in person.

My upcoming events:

24-25 May: Artscape, Baltimore, MD. Artscape is relaunching in a new location with new dates. You can find me in the Artisan Market. All the details are here

8 June: Cleveland Park Day, Washington, DC

I would love to see you at one of these events and let you look through the hundreds of Itty-Bitty paintings I’ve made over the last several months. If you can’t make it to a show IRL, you can still find about 100 somewhat larger original paintings in my online shop.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoy my work, please consider subscribing, buying some art, or buying me a coffee.