The Artful Dodger

ENCOURAGEMENT

Following a conversation late last year with Granddaughter #2 about her love of art and plans for the future, I was a little surprised at her reticence to show off her work online the way so many young people do, especially since she planned on a career involving art. She is reasonably confident in the art she produces and receives praise all the time from her family and teachers, so the reaction made little sense to me at the time.

We talked about the need for her to build an art portfolio to secure her desired place in further education and eventually employment, but still she was shying away from showing off her work. So I said I would set up a social media account dedicated to showing the world my “art” if she would post hers on her social media platform of choice every now and again.

PLATFORM

Instagram being a social media platform that, at least prior to being subsumed into facebook, was all about the visual, so we decided that would be the right one to share our treasures and so I set up the @son.of.the.wolf. art account. Well actually I set up the @sonofthewolfart account at first until I realised I just couldn’t stop noticing the word ‘fart’ at the end and, despite it appealing to the perpetual 8 year old boy inside me, I modified it slightly. [Note: not sure if I mentioned before that Son of the Wolf is a direct anglicised translation of my surname].

FEAR

I have to admit after my well meaning bravado I had a moment of trepidation when I realised what I posted as art would be available for critique by the entire Insta population. My inbuilt lack of confidence in my skills was in overdrive and I began to panic at how I might react negatively to being panned by the great art-adept public. This was until I realised at my age it was inappropriate to have the exact same emotional response to these things I would have had as a teen, when I have had my life and my work criticised by a whole cast of characters for decades and survived! So it became another thing where I tell myself to Feel the Fear and Fuck the Consequences. The benefit of examining this reaction in the light of how GD#2 had reacted wasn’t lost on me either.

FOLLOWERS

Within a couple of weeks I had accrued 250 followers and after just a couple of months that went to 500 (it’s currently over 750 and still rising each day!). When you compare that to just 175 followers on my main personal account which I’ve had for years and years, you can see how impressed I was that so many people were even mildly interested in my efforts.

Of course Instagram is a business and a business platform and so many of the people clicking the Follow button were doing so in order for me to reciprocate and hopefully get the Almighty Algorithm to reward them with some prominence. Important if you’re an artist operating a small business and selling your art – which thankfully I’m not and am therefore immune to that level of pressure. However, I choose to believe at least some of them actually liked what I was posting, as I liked their work and I certainly saw some semblance of community showing up on occasions.

EXPLORATION

My new focus on producing pieces and reviewing the posts of the art community on Instagram both filled the days throughout a weather beaten winter and helped me to broaden my horizon when it came to what can be designated as art (see my previous post ‘But Is It Art?). It also expanded my own notion of what I like when it comes to art and even surprised me. I’ve enjoyed the whole gamut from hyper-realistic digital offerings to what can only be described as squiggles with just a few lines and rendered in ballpoint pen. The only exception being AI generated posts that seem to be gaining volume if not popularity. It may be my lack of understanding (boomer strikes again?) but I don’t see what the artistic achievement is if your computer generated the image because you asked it to.

PRAISE

Something else that surprised me was my reaction to the praise I received for some of my work. Given my natural cynicism I would have expected to brush off the supportive comments as simply part of the social media Algorithm Dance, and many are just that I suppose, but quite a few are genuine based on the personality of the people involved, insomuch as it is reflected in their online behaviour amongst their peer group. It won’t overturn my natural tendency to dismiss received praise – after all a lifetime of watching praise being used as something that can be both given and taken away in order to manipulate doesn’t dissipate because someone online gives you a thumbs up or a kind word in the comments – but there is the choice to either use it for motivation or waste it by being too dismissive of it.

100 DAYS

And then came the 100 Day Project (I’ve mentioned this phenomenon before) where ‘Creatives’ spend 100 days, well… creating, and post their efforts online. I’ve engaged with this project in years past to various levels of success and thought it would be ideal to help me maintain my new found hobby. I worked on pieces every day and posted roughly every 2 days to the SOTWA Instagram account. It definitely helped with the motivation – especially in the sagging middle of the 100 days – and I thought it would allow me to generate enough posts and reels to hold up my end of the bargain I made with GD#2.

KNOWING ME / KNOWING YOU

As part of that ‘examined life’ Socrates wanted us all to live, this endeavour was useful. It encouraged me to put aside potential criticism and plow on anyway, to rediscover my love of art and especially amateur art, spending time with art materials on a regular basis, and to express myself through the pieces I made over the few months involved – not to mention the buzz of actually sticking to the commitment for 100 days!

GD#2 on the other hand posted two images to her account way back when I set up my SOTWA account and once having gotten the old man off her back went dark again. Oh well I tried and I choose to think of it as some excellent learning and her loss  – I will be around to wave the flag of encouragement again when she needs it though 🙂

 

 

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