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ok so this is going to sound so small and obvious but I've been doing the whole "post consistently and engage in comments" thing for months and it's fine but it's also like... waiting for people to find you? and I got sick of it?? So last week I picked 12 accounts, not big influencers, just people with really good eyes who share art they love, some are collectors, some are just normal people with nice feeds. And I sent each of them a genuine message, like "hey I saw you reposted [artist]'s work the other day and I think you'd like what I do too, here's my latest piece" with a photo attached. No templates, no pitchy stuff. Six of them wrote back. SIX. One bought a small study on the spot, two said they'd keep me in mind, and the other three just had really nice conversations that made my whole week. One of them runs a tiny gallery I didn't even know about and invited me to submit for a group show. I think I got scared of DMs because it feels like bothering people? But if you're genuine and you actually looked at their feed and you're not just copy-pasting, it's... not bothering them?? It's just a person saying hi?? Anyway I'm doing it again this week with a different batch. Thought I'd share in case anyone else is staring at the algorithm like it owes them something lol

Okay so I've been trying to figure out this whole "get your art in front of people who actually buy it" thing instead of just posting into the void and hoping. I kept reading that you're supposed to DM interior designers and stylists but nobody ever says what you're actually supposed to SAY to them?? Like "hi I'm an artist" feels so flat. So last week I just went for it. I picked 12 designers who post the kind of spaces I could actually see my work in, warm, natural light, not super minimal. And I literally just said something like "hey! I'm a watercolor painter and I've been obsessed with how you use color in [specific project they posted]. Just wanted to share a few pieces I think would sit nicely in that kind of space, no pressure at all but thought I'd throw it out there" and attached 3 photos. 3 replied. One asked to set up a call. One said "send me your portfolio" and then went quiet lol. One just said "beautiful work, I'll keep you in mind" which could mean nothing but also could mean something?? I don't know. The thing is I felt so awkward doing it. Like I'm bothering them. But also nobody saw me do it so who cares right. I'm gonna do another batch this week and actually follow up with the ones who went quiet because my friend who's a freelancer said that's the part everybody skips. Anyway just wondering if anyone else has tried this and whether it actually turned into sales or just polite replies that go nowhere. I'll report back if that call turns into anything 🙃

Went through the grid on sunday, coffee going cold, and deleted about forty posts. all the ones from the two years i was posting three times a week because some course told me consistency beats everything. the close-ups of brush texture. the flat lays. the "process" shots where nothing was actually happening, i was just holding a palette knife near the canvas for the camera. here's the part i didn't expect: engagement dropped maybe 15%. nothing. two years of unpaid labor, roughly 300 posts, and the audience i built on it never bought anything. the people who actually show up to a show or send me a DM asking if a piece is still available found me through a friend or a wall, not through a texture close-up. what did change is i stopped dreading opening the app. i post maybe once every ten days now, usually one bad photo of the studio with stuff piled on the floor, and it does about as well. the thing i keep circling is that i can't tell if the 15% was worth it. there's no clean answer. everyone says the algorithm rewards volume and maybe it does, but volume was making me hate the work, and the work is the only part i can't fake. anyone else cut back and just... not noticed a difference?

okay real talk, cold emailing galleries. do you actually do it? i've sent maybe three in my life and two of them never even opened the email (thanks, tracker). the one that did open it never replied lol. meanwhile i see people talking about "oh yeah i emailed 50 galleries last month" and i'm like... who ARE you. are you real. teach me your ways. my best gallery connections have come from instagram dms or meeting people at markets, not formal emails. maybe that's the way? or maybe i'm just bad at emails. what's your ratio? do you cold email and get replies or is it mostly a waste of time?

I got my first gallery by walking in off the street with a portfolio case, which today people act like I'm confessing to something embarrassing. But I walked in, asked if I could show the director my work, she had ten minutes between meetings, and she took me on. I know it's not the usual way now, everything is email, submissions, Instagram DMs. But I also know artists who've done it recently and it worked. So I'm asking: did you ever just walk into a gallery cold and get somewhere with it? Or is that completely dead and I'm just old? Me: Lyon, 2008, walked into a small gallery in the 1st, came back three days later with paintings. Stayed with them five years.

ok real question. everyone talks about the polite email, the cold open call, the submission portal that eats your soul. but has anyone ever gotten in somewhere sideways? i'll go first. i got my first group show because i was standing in the gallery trying to decide if i even wanted to submit and the owner came out and asked if i needed help. i was so flustered i just pointed at a piece on the wall and said "i could make that better." absolute foot in mouth. she laughed, told me to prove it, and i brought something in two days later. still don't know if that was confidence or sheer stupidity but it worked. so what's yours? walked in with a piece under your arm? slid into their DMs? emailed so many times they finally answered just to shut you up?

was cleaning up after a run of prints and my phone died mid-scroll so i just snapped the floor. pile of charcoal dust, torn paper scraps, half a cup of cold coffee sitting in the middle of it. posted it half as a joke, titled it "the actual studio." it did better than any finished piece i've put up in months. 4x the engagement, two dms asking about commissions, one guy asking if he could buy a print of the photo itself. and it's not even the first time. the messy shots, the process shots, the "here's my hands covered in paint" stuff always outperforms the clean documentation of the actual work. every single time. part of me is like, well, this is what people connect to, lean into it. but the other part wonders what it says that the actual art is the least interesting thing i post. like the product is boring and the labor is the spectacle. i keep posting the finished work anyway. i don't even know why anymore. stubborn probably. or scared that if i go full process-bro, the work just becomes content and i lose whatever i have left of the point of it all.