A Most (Un)necessary Evil...

A Very Happy New Year to you my lovelies. If you know me, you will have noticed I don't write my blogs regularly but have chosen to write as and when I have something to say so it would probably be worthwhile signing up to receive my blogs even though I do try to push them out to my readers.

The thing is, I'm having a real problem with this whole social media thing. I mean it does have it's uses and it's a lot more cost effective for us artists and creators these days to post something and get the odd sale out of it. The problem is, you have no real control over who sees what you post and much worse if you want to extend your reach then you have to put in a lot of time and effort... and that is my beef, it can very easily distract you from your real job!

Before I go on though, I want to say a massive thank you to friends, family, buyers, followers and more importantly the collectors of my work for your unstinted support in 2022, I very definitely would not be able to work as a full time professional artist if you had not bought my work. So Thank You!

These past few months, I have taken a bit of a back seat with social media. The reason simply is I was becoming obsessed with it. I obsessed about followers, I obsessed about reach, I obsessed about the comments I was receiving and I obsessed about the follow/unfollow thing that people do particularly on instagram; you know, they follow you, you follow them back and then they promptly unfollow you! You know that game? Well I was so obsessed I got one of those apps that tracks that sort of thing on and I promptly unfollowed unfollowers in retaliation, See what I mean? What a palaver!

And what a bind too! Unless you are one of those artists who produce daily paintings, (and there are many good ones who do), you might be like me who works on a studio piece that takes several days or weeks until it's finished, you might not always have something to share. You can I suppose share your progress on a daily basis but I no longer want to be bound by this.

I hadn't really meant to start the new year with a rant but then I don't really do new year resolutions so each new month is pretty much the same in terms of the tasks I set myself. I have determined social media is a necessary evil, I have made new friends, found new followers and even made sales from complete strangers, I want to grow my follower base organically, however slow the process and I want to lose my obsession about needing to be ever present. There are other outlets to be explored and I would prefer to dedicate some of my time to that. 

So... tell me, what's your relationship with social media and what other avenues do you have to share your wok? Please post a comment below and thanks for reading this. 



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