I watched Google Analytics like a hawk. I tweaked posts and put up stuff to be erudite and helpful and interesting. I tweaked social media settings, I added SEO plugins and diligently filled out the forms to make the site search engine friendly. And…
I sold one single print in six years. I got a mere hundreds of spam comments, a handful of actual people commenting, and I got to look brooding in my bio photograph. No inquiries from galleries. No museums wanting to add anything I did to their collection.
I’m a really good artist. I’m on the outside looking in. This sounds sad and bad.
It’s not. This is an arc of figuring out, through a lifetime, what this existence thing is all about. It’s an ongoing project.
What would “in” be? Would that have been after years of sacrifice to the religion of Art? Lots of suffering? Loss and disappointment? But it can’t be ordinary suffering, not day-to-day suffering. It would have to be artistic suffering.
All I wanted at 16 was to have pictures on my wall that I liked. I couldn’t afford art posters, or anything cool, but I could make stuff. It turned out this brought together all of those creative flows I’d been juggling all along. I could tell a story in an image. Bright colors and flowing lines.
It turns out painting is joy. It is soothing in that I get to focus and translate emotion into color and form. It’s distilling time into an object. A tangible result of experience. Not many get to do this.
I don’t want to be a talisman on a rich man’s wall, a trophy in a museum, not directly. But I thought that was possible as a side effect of being really really good at stuff.
Like Derrick Zoolander being ridiculously good looking. Circumstance would compel the world to take notice.
Or not.
So f**k all y’all. Get the hell off my lawn
Instead of a purposed site focusing on painting and creating paintings, I’m going to write and photograph and paint in random impulses and flows, and see what happens…
— spence
The steps to connection with strange humans online are similar to random conversations with strangers on a train, except that these do actually happen face to face, occasionally. We never lift our head up from a book, glance in from the view out the window, open our eyes as we listen to our ipod. We’re polite though, so the stranger opens a conversation. If we enjoy it, we hope to meet again – else change our normal time travel so we don’t.
I made several websites seeking response. I understand what you are saying. In a similar time period, maybe three decent comments that were not spam – what joy they gave me. No other interest despite multiple forays into SEO etc ad infinitum and stats saying 40,000 visits. I gave up. I am a writer. I’m a good writer. I’m going to write something good. At least I enjoy doing that.
I loved what you wrote. I get it. Like meeting a stranger on a train who is like me in some way.
“This is an arc of figuring out, through a lifetime, what this existence thing is all about. It’s an ongoing project for me…. What would “in” be? …a talisman on a rich man’s wall, a trophy in a museum… It turns out painting is joy…. distilling time into an object. A tangible result of experience. Not many get to do this. ”
I get it. Thanks for writing, the images, the thoughts. Reading it gave me peace, it’s more than enough.
Thank you.
–spence