art as a business,  Scattered thoughts

Out of the Matrix

02.01.2024 /

Over the past few years, I have observed with sadness and weariness that the efforts I make on a daily basis to maintain the Facebook page fall far short of the desired results, needed for me to function as a freelance artist.

As a person, who does almost everything by myself, this means I spend a huge amount of time, energy and mental resources figuring out “what to post each day” to keep the page “alive”. I invest in expensive art products, photo sessions, video scripts, video shooting, video editing, planning posts, writing texts for them… And all this only reaches my top 10 fans (thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support ), out of all the 20K that have liked and/or followed my page, because that’s how the algorithm “works”.

So at the risk of falling into oblivion, I no longer allow digital marketing, and the strive for visibility, because that’s what we’re all doing, to cripple my creative process and eat away the time I have for generating ideas, painting and interacting with clients. This decision is also supported by the changes in our behavior as users of this platform (if we use it at all): saturated with content, nothing really excites us anymore. If years ago a painting, combined with a beautiful poem was something touching, exciting and the audience eagerly devoured such content, today no one wants to read long texts, doesn’t even try to dive bellow the surface, and almost all social interaction is superficial and shallow. No one gets particularly excited while scrolling through the feed, like a mad person, while continues to claim, how busy he is and how time is never enough.

Not to mention the so called “business tools” which Facebook have barfed out to allow us to administer our Facebook pages – I have never seen such insanity, non-intuitiveness and degradation online. That, combined with the CONSTANT change in what works and what not, and the enormous effort needed to stay on the crest of the wave, is so tiring. Instead of fixing things that aren’t working, inadequate and unnecessary, Facebook keep making ridicoulous changes that no normal person can keep up with.

So, maintaining the page brings me no joy, but mostly frustration, and therefore I have a great resistance to giving my time and energy to a dying and inefficient platform. I believe 15 years are quite enough.

This is perhaps the place to share something else: the past seven years have been crushingly turbulent on a personal level. I won’t go into details, but I’ll just say that my husband and I lost all four of our parents, and the frequent encounter with death changes perspective. Against the background of these events and as I grow older, I am increasingly aware of our transience on this Earth, and this year, after my mom also left us, I could not help but ask myself some fundamental questions:

  • if I, hopefully, have another 20-25 years of a meaningful quality life ahead of me, what would I like them to look like?
  • what do I need to do / change in order to achieve inner peace?
  • what is the lifestyle I want to have?
  • what I want to create as a legacy to leave behind?
  • how can I take advantage of the freedom I now have?

The changes I am making will hopefully contribute, at least partially, to the answers to these questions.

My Instagram profile will be put on pause. I admit that this place had some appeal at first, but since it became a Facebook property, I have no desire to invest money to achive the necessary impression with my follower count. A lot of artists are leaving the platform, because despite thousands and millions of followers, it not only does it not bring them real income, but in some cases even hurts their business.

I intend to post very rarely on the Facebook page, with the idea of eventually leaving this platform entirely. If that means going back to the days of word of mouth marketing, so be it.

If you miss me and would like to give yourself the gift of beauty, with my original paintings, prints, vouchers, calendars or interior projects, you will be able to find me:

A special thank you to all of you, who have supported me as an artist over the years and continue to do so by recommending me to friends and colleagues, sharing my paintings and coming back for more. I believe that change is a good thing and that closing one door inevitably leads to the opening of several others. See you soon! 🙂

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