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I spent years tweaking my website. Better photos, cleaner navigation, more process shots, less process shots, SEO keywords my friend who works in tech kept telling me to use. And I'd get maybe three inquiries a month, usually from students asking about internships I don't offer. Two months ago my domain expired and I just... didn't renew it. Put together a single PDF with recent work, editions, prices in a table, and my email at the bottom. It's ugly. It's just a document. I send it to people who DM me or write. That's it. And somehow this feels more honest? Like the website was performing professionalism for nobody in particular, and the PDF is just me handing someone what they asked for. I've sold more prints in the last eight weeks than in the previous six months of having a proper site. I don't know if this scales or if it only works because I'm a printmaker with edition sizes I can count on one hand. But I'm starting to think the whole "you need a professional web presence" thing was built for a different kind of practice, or maybe a different decade.

Had a place reach out. Wanted a full portfolio, resume, artist statement, project proposals. All before they'd even agree to a studio visit. I just sent them a link to my website and said that was all I had. Anyone else get requests like this? Feels like a lot of hoops to jump through for a shot in the dark.

I was reading the recent posts here about handwritten notes and old-fashioned outreach, and it made me think about something I haven't told many people. Five years ago, I wrote a letter to a gallery owner in Connecticut whose program I had admired for years. Not an email. A letter. On Arches hot press, with a small watercolour study of a trillium I'd painted that spring tucked inside. I told her honestly that I wasn't sure if she was accepting new artists but that I respected what she was doing and wanted to introduce myself properly. She wrote back. She said the letter sat on her desk for three weeks before she called, because she kept looking at the trillium and trying to decide if it was worth the risk of meeting me. She took me on. That gallery remains the steadiest source of my serious sales. Not Instagram. Not my website. A letter. I don't think the lesson is that we should all be sending letters. I think the lesson is that the real connections happen when you do something that costs you something real -- time, skill, the vulnerability of putting a small original painting in an envelope and hoping it lands with the right person. It is harder to ignore than a form submission. I still send a letter occasionally when a connection matters to me. I have never once regretted it. I have regretted the polished emails I overthought and never sent.

Okay so I saw that post about ugly websites converting and it got me thinking because honestly? My own marketing feels like that sometimes. Like, I'm supposed to be this "artist" with a clean brand but my process posts are always so chaotic, sometimes I even accidentally show my dirty mug or a paint smudge on my arm and omg, the engagement on those is SO much higher than the perfectly curated ones. People seem to like seeing the actual work and not just the finished product. It feels super counterintuitive to the whole 'aspirational' vibe that marketing gurus push, but I'm getting more comments and saves on the messy stuff. Anyone else finding that the more you lean into the imperfect, the better things perform? It’s kinda making me want to just dump all my WIPs and sketches everywhere lol.