Maybe it is a phase... I don't know, but After writing in this blog for over 4 years, I am at a point of divergence. I am not sure where to go with this, but as I am getting more serious about my art and more thoughtful in how it develops, I am not sure how to keep the blog up.
For one, I feel I want to contemplate my art a lot more before I let it out. I want the freedom to mould it, brood on it and change, create and destroy it if I need to. So my habit of snapping and posting the paintings on the blog before they are dry to share them here has become a problem in many ways.
Sketch – Snow Field – After Eaton, 4”x6” Oil pastel on primed panel.
Before blogging, before we all went digital, the only way to see an artist’s body of work, was to visit their studio or wait for an exhibition. Today you can Google an artist and instantly see every piece of art they ever put online. That is fantastic on the one hand, and sobering on the other. We all know that just like batters in baseball, a 50% ration of good work to bad work produced per year is glorious! Heck, many of us are way below that ratio! We also go through growth in our work and in the phases where growth is happening, works are disastrous. Remember the funny clumsy way you felt when you were about to shoot up a few inches when you were young? It works the same in art.
Sketch – Sunset Abstraction – 4”x6” Oil on canvas panel
So how do I reconcile the competing gains? I want to share my art and have a presence on the web, but I don’t want to leave a trail of works on the internet that I do not wish to be represented by. Sharing sketches such as the ones in this post, unfinished art or art that has not ripened yet so to speak can send the wrong message about where I am on my art path. If this blog is a window into my art, how can I make sure it looks onto the best of my art and not the laundry room?
One way is to stop archiving posts. I am thinking very seriously about that. I would start another blog for my how-to posts and kill the long-term memory of this blog. With galleries pages being the place to see my work. That may work well, but it will take away from the enjoyment of seeing the development in my art and thoughts. Perhaps we can’t have it both ways. What do you think? If you are an artist, have you run across this problem too? If you are an art lover, how would you feel about a blog with no long-term memory?
