HOWEVER....I sometimes feel that it is TAKING OVER!!!
When I was a little girl, dreaming about growing up to be an artist, I imagined a wonderful life of painting all the time and exhibiting all over the world. Now I am grown up, and living the life of an artist, I find that I spend so much of my time at the computer. Between all the admin jobs, emailing, entering competitions, preparing proposals, tweeting, facebooking, blogging, mailouts and promotion, theres hardly any painting happening, How did this happen??!!!
To have a presence it seems that you need to be blogging once a week (at least I am up to date with this weeks!), posting on facebook at least every couple of days, tweeting regularly. I haven't quite got into the world of twitter yet, every now and again I tell my 73 or so followers that I've got some work in an exhibition coming up, retweet something interesting, and then don't log on again for afew days. I suddenly realise I forgot to tell them all about the wonderful painting exhibition I went to recently, the revelation I had about this or that....what a lovely time I had at that event the other day. I think for it to work I probably need to be tweeting more and for it to be second nature.
Maybe in time I will get into it abit more.....Its not that I don't like social networking sites - I think twitter is a brilliant tool to use to let people know about what you are doing, and also as a way to catch up on news and updates, as with all the social networking sites. As a strong believer in all things DIY - an ethos close to my heart and one that I continually promote in my art work, social networking fits. It is an excellent tool for artists to use to promote themselves - giving them autonomy. But it sometimes feels all consuming, and I'm always conscious that I'm not doing enough of it.
I'm wondering whether I might take 6 weeks off and see what happens. I want to promote my work, but I also want to make my work! We'll see.....I will keep you posted.
I recently stumbled across some of Filipo Minelli's work:
The imagery struck a chord with me and started me thinking about this issue in a wider context. We all spend so much time on computers, more so in our jobs than ever before. But people seem nostalgic for craft/skills based work where you can use your hands, and we are all aware that the presence of computers and the internet reduces face to face contact with each other. I wonder how things will stand in 2050?
Anyway! My next blog will probably be about the show in Copenhagen that I'm putting some prints in at the end of the month...or the show that me and Twinkle Troughton are curating at the beginning of November on Vyner street. And I must remember to facebook and tweet and tweet again!
Thankyou for reading, see you all on facebook! x
