Chris Simonite's Cubo-Weirdism Blog! A Blog about Chris Simonite's Art by Chris Simonite. Who the Hell else?

This past weekend I participated in my first ever Manitoba Art Expo here in fabulous Winnipeg. The first thing I have to say about it was, it was a success and I will certainly be back next year. Well, that is unless that fabled New York Gallery comes a callin'! But I won't count on that. So Art Expo it shall likely be! 

One of the things that Art Expo did for me, besides a significant number of sales, was that I signed up a goodly number of people to my email list. These are good people to have, at least those that end up keeping up with my emails. Unlike followers on Instagram, they are mine and no one can take them away. I'm looking at you damned Instagram algorithm!

Well, it's not entirely true that no one can take them away. They can certainly take themselves away, of course. There is always an unsubscribe button, so there's that. And that is why I have to work to keep them interested. And right now I'm not sure I'm getting the job done. You see a few months ago I told my subscribers that it was my plan to send weekly updates to my subscriber list. And I diligently did that. For a few weeks. But then it kind of stopped. Well, not kind of it stopped. It stopped. I just saw that I haven't sent one since July. Yikes! And it's almost Halloween! 

The thing is I've managed to keep up with the weekly blog for getting close to three years, but the newsletter, not so much. And I don't want to stop the blog because I know there are people reading it. There is always a spike in website visits on Tuesdays and many of them go to the blog and then check out other pages. So I need to figure out a way that works for me to do the blog and the newsletter. 

I'm just pondering here, but maybe I need to do is share my newest art with my subscribers every week. If you subscribe to my email list, you would see my work before anyone on Instagram. Would that be a good enough bonus for signing up for my list? Maybe I should just do this every two weeks? If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears!

In the meantime, I'll tell you a little more about Art Expo. As you can see here my little booth (I'll get a bigger one next year) was divided into two sections. The animals in landscapes and the pop culture portraits. Both styles, of course are united by their shared Cubo-Weirdism! As I said above, I have never done such an event, so I wasn't sure what to expect. But I had ideas about what I thought would happen. At this event there are a lot of really skilled artists, most of whom work–let's just say–more conventionally than I do. For example, there are a lot of landscape painters. So naturally, I thought my animals in landscapes would garner the most attention. 

Well, that wasn't the case. While that work did get some attention from people and even some interest in possible future sales, most people were interested in the portraits. And a lot of people were. Of course, I'll keep bringing the animals in landscapes and maybe even, if I'm feeling bold, I'll try some landscapes without animals! We shall see. Anyway, I think I did learn some things and I have a few ideas for next year. 

Untitled (Great Blue Heron), 11" x 14", oil on canvas, 2022. Available.

In the meantime, here is a Great Blue Heron in a landscape that I had at the show. It's still available, by the way! See you next week!