Hello, Hello. Is this thing on?

In which I ponder how best to promote my work and a reminder to vote for your favorite cold wax paintings for my 2025 Art Calendar.

BUT FIRST. Voting for my 2025 Art Calendar is still open through Friday, October 25th. Become a subscriber and you can vote on your favorite cold wax paintings.

“Embodied” my new solo show opens at Gallery MAR on November 8th

Sign up for the “First Look” Preview by emailing info@gallerymar.com

Back at the beginning of July, I posted on Instagram that I was taking a break from sharing my work on Instagram¹, largely because of IG’s policy on using the images for their AI model.² As an artist, my artwork is my IP, so using images of my art to train their AI model and then do who knows what with it, left a bad taste in my mouth. The truth is though, I was looking for an excuse to stop, to try something different, and to get off the hamster wheel. I was tired of thinking about what to post every day.

I was tired of having to produce art AND produce content.

The last time I posted on Instagram was July 8th. I have to say, it’s been REALLY nice not posting.

You could say I just transferred that energy over to Substack, where every week since, I’ve written a long form post, complete with photos sharing what I’m working on and promoting a project or new artwork. I’m still doing the work of promotion, but it has felt different, less frantic, more organized, and on my own schedule. This is really working for me, plus, I enjoy the writing.

My current camera roll. See! I’m working on the ornaments!

I have found that I don’t take pictures of my life like I used to. Four months later and my camera roll is just pictures of the dogs; random pictures of things I use as reminders; landscapes - trees, naturally, but also fields of fall grasses and wildflowers; funny things I send to my family; sunsets and sunrises; occasional pics of friends and family; and my resident road runner couple at our southern Utah place. For the most part, I stopped taking pictures of paintings in process. I don’t have time lapse videos of me at work. I don’t take 12 different pictures of the same thing, vertical and horizontal, so I have the perfect shot for IG. When I paint in my sketchbook, I don’t take a picture of it, and perhaps have spent less time there because I’m not worried about needing more content.³

A recent sunset outside of Zion National Park. I only took 2 photos of this. One super zoomed in and another wide to get the apple orchard in. In the old days, I would have taken 10, vertical and horizontal to have all the angles.

I am not documenting my life in photos like I did for the last decade, and the truth is, I think I am happier. My mental health since July has been SO MUCH BETTER. Like night and day better.⁴ This occurred to me just days ago when I realized that I started feeling better around the same time I stopped posting on Instagram. Now to be clear, I’ve also done a number of other things as well, so it’s not just about social media, and it could be purely coincidental, correlation is not causation, but the fact remains, I stand here now, a changed person.

What else have I done besides stop obsessing over Instagram posts?

• Meditation - I meditate more often. Not all the time, and not every day, and usually only for 5 minutes, but I’m doing it. I always hated meditating before, but now I’m sorta starting to like it.

• Morning Walks - All summer long, I took the dogs for a short 15 minute walk first thing in the morning - almost every day except when I had a cold a couple weeks ago. I don’t know if this will continue during the winter, but we’ll see.

• Sugar - I cut WAY back on sugar. I didn’t think I ate that much sugar, but after looking through the food in my pantry and seeing how much added sugar was in products like condiments and breads, I realized it was more than I thought it was. I did a hardcore, no sugar cleanse for 2 weeks, and now I try to keep my sugar intake to less than 25 grams (6 tsp) of sugar a day. Most days it’s way less than that. Honestly, this might be the best thing I’ve ever done, and if I had known it would be this helpful, I would have done it AGES ago. My anxiety is way down, my hormonal fluctuations are less extreme, my periods hurt less, and I haven’t had a panic attack since the day before I started the cleanse.⁵ This is not for everyone, but it’s been huge for me and I will absolutely stick with it.
  
  Links to articles about sugar and anxiety here, here, here, and here.⁶
  

• Art Focus - I focus on the art I want to make, not on making content about the art I’m making. Talk to any artist and they’ll complain about having to document their process. It sucks. It takes you out of the flow of the moment and has the artist considering how the viewer will see the art. Now I’m not saying the artist should never consider the viewer, but worrying about it while you’re making the art is a surefire way to make the art worse and have you questioning everything about the art, especially if it’s even worthy or not. I was so tired of my whole life and career feeling like performance art.

• Writing - I write A LOT more than I used to and I love it. Whether it’s in my journal, here on Substack, or this secret side project I’m working on that I’ll someday share with you. Writing feels really good for my brain.

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BUT, There’s a Trade-off

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After working this way for 4 months, I see there are a few trade-offs. A lot of friends don’t seem to know what is going on with my work anymore. I have a solo show opening at Gallery MAR in 2.5 weeks!! That seems important to promote. And people are wondering how to get updates because they never signed up for this newsletter (or perhaps they just never read them), and people want to know when new work is for sale and especially “When are the ornaments going to be available?!?!”

(Answer. November. I’m working on them now.)

Confirmation that yes, I am working on new ornaments. This year with mountains in the background.

I realize not everyone wants to read a newsletter, wants to use the Substack app/website,⁷ has the time to check their email, or is as militant as I am about Inbox Zero.⁸ So I can see that a lot of people are not getting the information they need about upcoming work and offerings. I suspect there are also people who miss the images I share of works in progress, and they enjoyed the voyeurism of watching my weird, abnormal life in the mountains.⁹

“Hello, hello? Is this thing on?”

I also get zero feedback from ya’ll using Substack. I’m not sure if that’s because no one wants to comment on the newsletters, that it’s too hard, or that the medium of newsletters just doesn’t encourage people to comment. It’s a mixed bag. I don’t need the feedback per se, but it can feel like I’m just talking into the void.

studies for new cold wax paintings

So, I guess this is all to say, you might from time to time see some posts on Instagram. Nothing crazy, but I may need a bit of a hybrid model. It seems that people are still using the platform and my business is in selling art, so we have to go where the people are. While writing these long-form posts works for me, people still seem to look at Instagram, although I would have never known that based on how low the engagement was on my posts. Seriously, it was like the same 20 people liked my posts, but no one else was around. I won’t be joining Tiktok though, and I never liked Twitter or the like, but I hope you’ll give these newsletters a chance. Think of them as anti-scrolling.

Anyone have any thoughts? Comments? Questions? Feedback? I mean seriously, is this thing on?

1. The irony of how well this post performed is not lost on me.

2. This still really chaps my hide, but what can you do? Not posting is the only way around it. Do I give in to the lull of Big Social Media??

3. I have had to look hard for pictures to include in today’s post.

4. To be open, my mental health from around 2019 (even pre-pandemic) until 2023 was not good - like looking back on it, I feel incredibly lucky to still be here, alive, in this body, with real hope in my veins. I hid the anxiety, the fears, and the low spots from most everyone. I don’t recommend this.

5. Interesting story. The day before I started the sugar cleanse, I decided to have a blow out with sugar. Had sweet stuff at breakfast, candy, then got a gas station hot chocolate+coffee (aka white trash mocha) as a treat, but lunch time, I was a wreck. We went into a restaurant that was super loud and busy. Food took forever to arrive and I had to exit the restaurant before eating because I couldn’t stay calm or inside. Had to go sit on a curb outside and do a lot of deep breathing to get back to normal. This was when I realized how bad sugar messed me up.

6. I AM NOT A DOCTOR. My story is not medical advice, I’m just telling you what I’ve done and what is working for me.

7. I chose Substack because I could send as many free newsletters as I wanted, it’s like blogging in the old days, it could have the potential to have a paywall for special projects, AND cause it’s where all the cool kids are - these are my favs right now: Mike Sowden, Alex Dobrenko, Anna Brones, Heather Cox Richardson, James Patterson, Katherine May, Austin Kleon. Other suggestions here.

8. There are currently 4 read emails in my Inbox. They stay there because they are reminders of tasks that need to be done. Even those 4 emails are annoying to me. One of my best tips is to use the “Snooze” function in gmail, which will remove the email from your inbox then return it to your inbox on a day of your choosing. Say you have tickets for an event next week, but you don’t have to do anything about it until then. Or snooze the email and then use it as a reminder next month when you need to work on it, but you don’t have to think about it until then, etc.

9. I certainly don’t miss the judgements on my life from strangers that felt they were entitled to send via comments or direct messages…