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

To blog or not to blog. That is the question. And the answer for this week, is to blog. As you know, I've been told blogging is a thing of the past and doing it in 2023 is a waste of time. And, maybe that's true, but after taking two weeks off from blogging I learned that fewer people visit my website during those weeks I don't blog. So there's that. Having said that, maybe updating my site more often with new work would solve that problem. I shall experiment. 

But for now, as I said I will write this here blog post here. I also mentioned in my last blog post that I've been told my approach to my newsletter and even my social media posts is not great. I need to be telling stories where the potential buyer is the hero as apposed to the hero being me. I made the art, but that doesn't make me a hero? Who knew? I digress… 

Anyway, I have to admit that I find this difficult to do. But last week I posted a video that really was about the subject of my painting.  You see, while I was at art camp for adults, I did some portraits of my fellow artists and friends. Just as I was about to show the finished product to one of these artist friends, I had a thought about 'unveiling posts' on instagram. You know the ones. An artist stands there with the back of a painting showing and turns it around to unveil it to the world. It's been done a million times. So I had the idea that someone should take video of me doing just that but with a twist. The twist being, it would actually be the first time the subject of my work would see his portrait. 

So I think, the hero of that story was Michael, the subject of the painting. But of course, most of my paintings are of pop culture subjects. So how do I make my collectors (or future collectors) the hero of the stories I tell about those? That is a puzzle I still have to solve. Or I can just continue to post things the way I have been. But the fact is, most of the traffic to my website comes from social media. And the changing algorithms have stagnated my growth. So I have to figure something out! 

Seema, 14" x 11", oil on canvas, 2023.

In the meantime, here is my portrait of Seema. You can check out my video where I unveil the painting to her to get her actual reaction if you go to my social media pages! See you next week. Maybe.