Learning Curves and Social Networking

I feel like I am in the beginning of a huge learning curve. Social Networking. Should I link all of my sites? How should I do this? Which ones should I focus on? Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, My space. There are programs to manage your programs. And for each one, is there an etiquette? How can you unfollow someone without offending them? Are they boring? Am I boring? What should I write? Is it just one big slushpile of small talk? Should I try to appear witty and interesting? Are people going to like me? Should I care? Should I shamelessly promote my art? Should I spend less time online and more time painting? How much time can I invest in social networking?

It can be overwhelming. There is quite a bit of information out there to help you manage all of this.  One of them is at http://www.twitip.com/make-a-tweet-plan-to-get-the-most-from-twitter/ . It deals with Twitter, which is where I have been hanging out in the evenings. Another one I found useful is http://kabai33.com/2009/01/27/keeping-up-with-social-media/ . I do believe that there is a lot to be gained from social networking. There are so many interesting and talented people in this world and this is your chance to stumble upon them.

Twitter

I decided to start tweeting in earnest a few days ago. I had two goals in mind. First, I wanted to see what it was all about. Second, I wanted to see if it would get people to my website. I found out real soon that it could be fun. I also decided early on not to follow just anyone. I decided to primarily follow other artists, art lovers, galleries and museums. There are exceptions to this, if I think you are really interesting. If you bore me or are just using it to, lets say, market your Etsy stuff shamelessly, I will quit following you. It also amazes me what people put in their descriptions. Do I really need to know you that well? Living gluten free. Okay.

As far as the website, it has actually increased traffic a lot. Time will tell if it actually brings sales of artwork. The visitors I get through Twitter take their time and look at much of the artwork. I am hoping, of course, that it will increase sales of my artwork. But I am also glad to meet other artists. There are so many talented artist in the world and it seems that many of them are on Twitter. Hi y’all.

Oz, the land down under

The splashes of color that you see at the top of the page are a detail of one of my paintings. I saw a beautiful documentary on Australia and before it was over I was in my studio trying to get those amazing colors down. I have several of them at this point and plan on continuing the series. I call it my Oz series. Australia imagined.

Untitled and Unfinished

I dream of paint, slipping from my fingertips, painting the world

Gaudy

Brushes are not enough

I want to trowel it on, take handfuls of pigment

Sculpt it like clay

It is an awesome thing, to hold light in your hands

The names speak history and chemistry and poetry

Burnt umber

Alizerin crimson

Cerulean blue

Cadmium orange, luscious

Opera pink, luminous

Green gold, like a note on a flute,

Colors created on the first day.

I fill up on color, feast on light

Drunk with power.

With liquid light, what can I not do?

Small Mercies

Small Mercies

Summer slips through the sere brown grass

We sit drained by the heat

In the dry husks of our homes

On this fragile crust

In geology’s vast time

We are come and gone

Suddenly.

One thin layer of soil, sand, rock.

A dung beetle’s home

Is no more fragile than our own.

Nature wreaks havoc

On us all.

Wind, water, the trembling earth

Small mercies save us.

A degree of heat in water,

Somewhere, a small shift

In the physics of air

A wing flaps

And we are safe.

Elsewhere the world ends,

In water, wind, fire.

Words.

In a perfect world, everyone could follow my sometimes convoluted thought processes. This is not a perfect world. Sometimes my thoughts and conversations make what appear to me to be perfectly logical leaps. To the people that I am talking with, however, who aren’t privy to the intricate thoughts processes that are going through my brain like a freight train, this can be disconcerting. So I called this main category “Leaps of Illogic” because I will probably do the same thing here.