There have been plenty of artistic Internet sensations, but Brooklyn's own Matt Held may be the first painter to really hit it big with Facebook. NY1's Arts reporter Stephanie Simon filed the following report.

With every brush stroke, Brooklyn artist Matt Held, seen above, is putting the face back into Facebook. Held has about 4,500 friends on Facebook, and they all want to be painted by him.

"I just started working on this last week and his name is Dan Bartell. He's in Seattle," says Held.

At his home studio in Windsor Terrace, Held is busy working on Facebook portraits of friends and strangers. It all stated when Held quit his job at Christie's last November to be a stay-at-home dad and a full time painter.

"I decided one day to paint my wife's Facebook portrait, just as more of a practice than anything, to see if I could get the skin tone," says Held. "Because that's what I was having a lot of problems with."

Next, he starting painting his friends' Facebook portraits as well. Before long, he was getting requests from people around the world. So he formed the group "I'll Have My Facebook Portrait Painted By Matt Held."

"At first, I was painting quite fast and trying to get as many of the portraits out as I possibly could so people could see that I was actually producing some work and it's not just some kind of a joke group," says Held.

Now, with plans for a solo exhibit in September at a Chelsea gallery, plus blogs and write-ups from around the world, Held is moving more slowly and picking tougher subjects.

If you wind up friending Held on Facebook, make sure you have lots of good interesting images for him to look at

"I don't really know how I pick them. I just see one and it's like, 'That would make an awesome painting,'" says Held.

Held has done more than 60 portraits and sold about 10 of them. They go for about $1,800. In all, he plans to paint 200 Facebook portraits.

"I don't want to be the guy who 25 years down the road I'm still painting Facebook portraits, even though Facebook has gone the way of Friendster," says Held.

Until then, Held credits Facebook with his booming success.

"Everywhere from just finding images to paint, to the people I've met to the connections I've made," says Held.

So befriend Matt Held on Facebook and join his Facebook group.

His solo show, "Facebook Portraits," is at Platform Gallery in Chelsea from September 10 to October 3, at 529 West 20th Street, Suite 4W. For more information, call 1-212-647-7030 or visit platform.denisebibrofineart.com.