Howdy, I’m Jasmine! I am the creator of the Strangeling brand, the painter of all the paintings, and the artist behind the Strangeling Public Domain project.
I have decided to gift the bulk of my extensive back catalogue of images to the public. In this initial phase of the project I am facilitating the process by including 625 high resolution scans of my original acrylic paintings spanning from 1999-2021 as free downloads on this website.
Art lovers, Strangeling fans, and students are all welcome to enjoy the images close-up. Crafters, teachers, and hobbyists can have fun with printing out the pictures for learning and entertainment. In what I understand is an industry first, I’m taking this project a step further by offering these works free of charge for any individual or company wishing to license my images for free, with no restriction, as I have decided to register all of these paintings under the Creative Commons 0 “No Rights Reserved” license.
Yes — if you have an Etsy shop, a booth at the farmer’s market, a factory in China, a t-shirt booth at a convention, a magazine that needs illustrations, a clothing brand that wants fun fabrics, a studio set decorator that needs a bunch of license-free posters, a tattoo shop that gets a lot of Strangeling fans — have at it! If you are an intrepid, plucky teenager with free time and a decent phone, download the high-res files and head over to Zazzle or Society6 and start yourself a homemade store featuring my work and tell your friends. Go make some money! If you feel like you’d like to thank me or compensate me with part of the earnings, please make a pledge at my Patreon. I would be very grateful, even if it’s just a dollar.
I understand that this project may be seen in the industry or financial sectors as being counter-intuitive. I very much understand that I am in a unique position to use myself as a guinea pig for what I consider to be a viable new business model. This would not be an advisable decision for most artists/brands/content creators. Honestly, other painters — maybe don’t try this one at home! But I invite you to watch with me to see if this system doesn’t work for me better than the current system does. Part of the reason I am relinquishing my rights to these works is to highlight the gross inequalities I see in the way artists and content creators are exploited by the current outdated and broken system of intellectual property through licensing and top-down gatekeeping. I think many of us are tired of a world where the artist is always, always, always paid last and inevitably it is the public who ends up paying the surcharge and the true fans who end up disappointed.
I invite you to actively participate if you would like to use the Strangeling images for your own personal or corporate commercial use for profit! You do not have to pay me, most people don’t. You don’t need to ask my permission, I have already granted it.
It is my theory, supported by decades of my own personal and professional experience since I created Strangeling in 1997, that this model of artist-lead image distribution will provide an exciting, inclusive and effective way of satisfying fans, art directors, bootleggers, and entrepreneurs alike.
The online shopping behemoths and wholesale sites like Amazon, Alibaba, and Wish.com have hijacked the relationship between the painter and her audience and make selling unlicensed merchandise far easier than enforcing intellectual property. The advertising algorithms of social media giants have been favoring pirated products using my images, with no intellectual property laws ever actually enforced, and individuals such as myself not able to hire enough lawyers in the world to prosecute, let alone recoup lost royalties. The largest social media platforms routinely sell my own name as a CPC keywords (way over my own budget) to let unlicensed companies advertise bootlegs of my work on my own official page, with every DMCA takedown notice spawning a thousand more.
It has become a situation where the only solution for me at least to stop being a victim is to decriminalize the crime. By gifting my work to the public, I am wholeheartedly granting permission in advance. It is important for me to add that the impetus for my Public Domain Project is not a reaction to the negativity of IP laws and the headache of perpetual legal arguments. More than anything, I see that much of the public adores my work, and I adore showing it to people. My goal is to share my artwork with as many people as I can, and I think that this is the best path for me at this time to do so.
It’s also very important to add that this in no way means that you will see less paintings from me in the future. In fact, by removing the hours and heartaches involved with owning my own copyrights from the equation, I will have more time to focus on actual painting. I will be starting many NEW paintings in 2022 and will be sharing my process and also releasing new images also available for high-resolution downloads to the public. With paintings created from 2022 on, these will first be available to my Patreon Patrons, who will have early access to all new images created for the public domain and available with the Creative Commons 0 license.
We will continue also to have fine art prints, original paintings and other artist-direct merchandise for sale at Strangeling.com — in fact we will be launching many new products and editions for sale at Strangeling that will delight fans and collectors who prefer to purchase directly from me.
Patreon is an integral part of this phase of my project, and I encourage you to join me up there. If you are a content creator yourself I encourage you to go start your own Patreon. I see it as the platform most useful for creating a direct connection between artists and their audiences — and it is a two way conversation between the artist and the viewer without the manipulation of outside industry elements or advertising. Please join me here and stay tuned at Strangeling.com as my experiment evolves. And hey — let’s see if we can’t prove those art directors right who seem to think “getting paid in exposure” is a viable salary… but let’s make it actually work for once.
x Jasmine
About Jasmine Becket-Griffith
Jasmine Becket-Griffith is a traditional acrylic painter, combining elements of realism with fantasy and the surreal.
Historical and spiritual references are intertwined with fairytales and the beauty of nature. Her trademark liquid-eyed maidens evoke a wide range of emotions and responses to the surrounding imagery. It is her goal to bring a bit of magic and mystery to the mundane world with every painting!
Jasmine’s images appear in many books and magazines as well as countless merchandising lines such as the Bradford Exchange and Hamilton Collection, and her artwork with the Walt Disney Company, LucasFilm and more. Her paintings have a very wide appeal, appearing in public and private collections throughout the world, and she maintains an ever-growing legion of fans from all walks of life with her “Strangeling” brand.
Jasmine was born in 1979 and began showing her work professionally in 1997. She is a full-time painter and lives between her studios in Celebration, Florida, and Long Beach, California. Her primary galleries are the Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles and Disney’s WonderGround & Pop Galleries at Disneyland and Disney World.