at the mercy of the scroll

there was a trend for a while on instagram where artists showed a painting from the back and slowly turned it around to reveal the work. i remember watching it and wondering why so many artists were doing exactly the same thing.

it embarrassed me slightly. not the artists themselves, but the sense of audition. make the reveal, hold the attention, hope someone stays long enough to look.

art doesn't stay art for long on a screen. it becomes another image among thousands. paintings, reels, advertising, news, someone's lunch, ai-generated images. all of it arriving through the same small rectangle.

i notice what it does to me physically. my chest tightens. within minutes i've seen things i would never have chosen to look at and usually can't remember afterwards. i close the app feeling as though i've consumed something rather than seen anything.

i grew up with a large book called the history of art and my dad's medical books on anatomy. i spent hours with them. i could go back to the same image again and again without anything else appearing beside it.

sometimes i wonder what would have happened if i'd grown up with a phone in my hand instead.

i have never found a way to make social media work for me. years of deleting profiles, starting again and trying to convince myself there was some reason to be there. i've collected likes, but you can't live on likes.

mostly i want to make the work and then leave it alone. the part i care about happens in the studio. everything afterwards has always felt like another job attached to it.

instagram made me think too much about how something would appear before i had even made it. whether it would photograph well, whether someone would stop, whether it needed explaining.

that is the part i no longer want.

so i stopped trying to make instagram into something it isn't for me.

the account is public again because it helps direct people to my website. i may post three or four times a year. enough to keep a presence, but not enough for it to start shaping the work.