Instagram sold me a painting and I can't explain how
I keep reading these threads about which platform is dead and which algorithm is punishing you and I have no insight to add because the only actual sale I got from social media this month came from a throwaway reel of me sharpening a palette knife. Just a plain knife and the ring of it against the sharpening stone. No music, no talking, 11 seconds, shot on my phone propped against a mug.
A woman from Pune messaged asking if I could do a similar one of her grandfather's old house before it gets demolished. Paid a deposit before I even sent her a sketch.
Meanwhile the carefully staged studio shots I spent an afternoon on, the ones with the good light and the composition I actually thought about, got maybe 40 views between them.
I have stopped pretending I understand any of this. The algorithm wants what it wants. Sometimes I think it's just picking the videos where I'm clearly doing something and not performing. The minute I set up the ring light it knows and punishes me for it.
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The palette knife reel is interesting to me because it's not accidental, exactly, but I think it works for a reason you didn't stage. A sharpening sound is one of those things where you can't fake the attention. Nobody watches a polished studio tour and believes they learned anything about the person. But eleven seconds of a knife against a stone, that's a real duration. It has a beginning and end. It's proof of labor, not proof of aesthetics.
And I don't think it's a coincidence the commission was for someone's grandfather's house. She wasn't buying a painting, she was buying the record of something disappearing. That's not the algorithm, that's just people wanting objects to hold memory. Social media mostly gets in the way of that, but sometimes it's just the mailbox.
I'd be curious what the carefully staged studio stuff looks like compared. Because I have a suspicion the staged work is more for other artists, and the knife thing was for everyone else.
You've actually put your finger on something I couldn't name myself. "Proof of labor, not proof of aesthetics", that's exactly it, na? The studio tours do feel like theatre. Even when I film them honestly, they come out staged because a room prepared for the camera is already a set.
The grandfather's house thing hit me harder than I expected. When she described it, the compound, the old teak staircase, the neighbours who've sold already, I realised I wasn't selling her a painting either. I was selling her the permission to keep it. Same reason I paint these old houses of ours before the JCB comes. It's not documentation, it's refusal. I think she and I both know the painting won't save anything. But somebody ought to have looked at it properly before it went. That's what the commission actually is, and we both knew it without saying it aloud.
Anyway. Now I'm wondering if that's why the sharpening reel worked too. Not the knife. The care. Eleven seconds of a person taking care of the thing that does their work. People can tell the difference. Seems we both noticed that. 🙂
You have explained it very nicely. In our tradition we say the painting is not finished by the brush, it is finished by the hand that holds it, and the eye that has been doing the same lines for thirty years. The proof is in that, not in the showroom. A person watching that knife, they are watching the hands of someone who knows what the work costs. That is why she trusted you with her grandfather's house. She saw you are a person who gives care to small things. That is not a small matter, ji. Please send my regards to her, and to the house also, before it goes.