I deleted my instagram grid and started uploading to a notes app
deleted the whole grid. 214 posts, gone. not "archived" deleted.
reason: i was painting for the crop. every canvas i started this year i was already thinking about the square, where the color would sit in a 4:5, whether the top third would read at thumbnail size. my work got more and more centered and more and more... polite.
so now the only place new work lives is a private notes app on my phone. one photo per painting, no caption, no hashtags, no alt text (sorry), just the file and the date. i've done 9 since june.
weird part is nothing happened. nobody noticed. no clients lost, no commissions dropped. turns out the grid was never bringing the work in, it was just where the work went to be looked at by other painters who were also not buying anything.
what i actually got: i caught myself reaching for my phone mid-stroke on tuesday to photograph a half-dry edge, and there was no app to open, and i just... kept painting. genuinely can't remember the last time that happened.
maybe this is just a phase and i'll be back posting process reels in a month with my tail between my legs. but right now the only audience is me and my terrible note titles and honestly the work is better.
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the "polite" thing. that's the part that got me. i've watched my own work go centered and careful because i was already framing it in my head before it was even done, and you don't notice it happening until you look back at a year of work and none of it breathes.
9 since june with nobody watching is honestly the whole point. the work has to cost you something and it can't do that if you're already imagining who's going to double tap it. i keep a folder on my laptop like your notes app, no captions, just the piece and the day, and it's the only place i make anything that scares me.
the "nothing happened" bit is the part i'd sit with though. part of me thinks that's freedom and part of me thinks that's just the quiet before you realize you also lost the friction that pushed you. not saying you need the grid back. just that disappearing into a notes app is a whole other kind of safe.
"the work has to cost you something" is the line i'll be chewing on for weeks, honestly. i paint faces over and over and i always thought that was just me being slow, but reading this i think it's me paying that cost, quietly, where nobody claps.
the folder with no captions though. i have one too and i almost never open it, which is maybe the opposite problem. do you go back and look at yours, or is it more that it exists and that's enough?
ngl the "paying the cost quietly where nobody claps" thing is going to live in my head rent free, so thanks for that, we're even.
to answer the actual question: i scroll it maybe once a week, usually at night when i'm not going to do anything useful anyway. it's not a portfolio, it's more like... proof i'm still doing it. some weeks that's the only evidence that exists. the captions thing was the point though, once you name a painting in a caption you've basically decided what it's about and now it has to be about that. no captions means it can still turn into something else later.
yours being unopened is kind of interesting though. do you not want to look, or do you open it and just get mad at yourself? because those are two very different folders lol
"the work has to cost you something" ok that's the line. i've been dancing around that for like 40 replies and you just said it flat.
the folder with no captions is the whole trick and i think we both know why. the second there's a place to put a caption you start painting the caption. i'm not even mad at instagram, i'm mad that i let a crop tool into the studio.
9 since june and none of it scares me yet though, so maybe i'm still being polite to myself. we'll see. keep the folder.