Why did I create a website for my art? 

Was it for fame or recogntion, those  often hollow tricksters?  Was it to make money, perhaps an income for my retirement?  What retirement?  Was it purely to allow my paintings and drawings to be seen by a wider audience (or visience, is that a new word)?  Perhaps all of the aforementioned.   It helped that  I came into a little extra lucre last year, and subsequently earmarked some of it for this project.  I hired a local (Rochester, NY) design firm and rolled up my virtual sleevelets.  It was difficult work and it took a lot longer than it should ‘ve, but there was a deep feeling of satisfaction once it was up and debugged.  So in and of itself it is a piece of my artistic life.  That is enough, for now. 

My first slice of advice for any artists out there contemplating webitude is this:  Stay away from templates and do-it-yourself websites.  Get bold, be radical, be different from anything else out there, because mediocrity is a crime against art, and there gazillions of mediocre art websites, and, no doubt there millions more being cut and pasted together even as I write this bite.  

My second bit of advice is:  Get your duckies in a very well organized row first, because inevitably, if left to their own devices,  they will tend to get very heavy and sink .  I still regret not learning how to set up my store better ahead of time.  It is still not what I envisioned but I am stuck with it for now since I can’t raise taxes on the peasants again to support my decadent art habit. 

Third bit of unasked for advice:   Practice writing about your art if you have never done it.  I am not a naturally verbal, or nounal, person and my art is best done in a mild samadhi, or low-thinky state.  When it came to needing to write about my work for the ever voracious search spiders, I found only stymiedness, and lameness.  At first.  Much editing and re-re-thinking about what was relevant and what was bullshit ensued, resulting in fairly ok descriptions of my stuff and something of what I wanted to communicate to the the-public. 

Revelation # 1: I am often plagued by doubts about the quality of my art but have learned to live with those nagging, niggling voices.  If you are an artist who suffers from, not for your art, you had best learn to let go of the art gremlin, or at least learn to laugh at it.  Don’t take anything personally,  especially if you get no sales or even a tentative nibble now and again.  There, I’ve said it, which leads into…..

Revelation #2:  I haven’t sold a f****** thing from the website yet.  Am I lost in despair about that factoid?  Will I jump off the nearest graffiti covered wall after spray painting my epitaph?  No Way.  My sacred mission hasn’t been fulfilled (* more about my sacred mission soon, stay tuned) and besides I don’t have a can of spray paint, being a mostly digital type artiste.   I plan to maintain the site to my dying day, even if the sum profit is less than zilch.  It really is beginning to have a life of its own and this becomes evident when someone from Barcelona, whom I will never know, spends 20 minutes looking at the site. 

I recently returned from a SCUBA vacation in Honduras, and as a very visual being, was astounded at the richness of color and life in the mountains and ocean there.  Birds, fish, reptiles so vivid and flowing with Life.  A green sea turtle, perfect sunsplash markings on its shell, six feet from my joyous nose, gracefully gliding, a creature from another, more perfect and silent realm.  An iridescent lizard in green and blue, who was basking on the sand and let me take eleventy photos.  Utila, I will return again.

As always, thanx for reading and I will be getting more regular this month.  Here is a pic of the Honduran jungle waterfall we climbed to one sweaty, sunny day, so far away.  Also the shy green iguana seen on our hotel grounds. 

A lost world, found

A lost world, found

A rarity, even on Utila

A rarity, even on Utila