I hate metrics of twitter and instagram (here’s how valuable you are, quantified). So I never look at the analytics of The Losing Well. It’s unique in that way. My own private Twitter, upon which voyeurs may gaze. Some other reasons why I made and love the Losing Well:
I cannot say what I want/feel on twitter (same with fucking Medium) without being notified when someone likes something I’ve said.
I don’t like the pressure to regularly pump out what will be interpreted as finished products
I have no desire to shove my thoughts down people’s throats on a public platform. No desire to beg for attention. If you want to know what I’m honestly thinking about, we’re going to need to get rid of the word limit and the power dynamics. On Instagram and Twitter, the tacit dynamic is such that the person posting puts him/herself out there with the implied hope that people selectively dole out power to them by liking and sharing.
On the Losing Well, people cannot comment or respond without making a substantial effort.
I feel I have enough privacy to write what I feel like writing without worrying whether the public will vote it valuable.
Twitter is only for being funny/witty, and I mostly want to brood. Instagram is for highly curated and aesthetically similar pictures. That’s great. I just want a platform that favors the experiment by not favoring anything at all.
When I realized I was an introvert, I realized this: To create pure art, I must separate the creation of art from the anticipation of an audience reaction.
When I realized the above I was freed in many ways. The grip that an audience had on my art became looser. My process became more free, and more intense at the same time. More personal. The product, purer.
Commissioned art is the least pure form of art. It expresses nothing but a transaction. From start to finish, the artist is just a tool for someone else to express their love for their dog. In a commission, the patron is the artist.
Impurity of an Artist's Work by Percent
My mom’s recent endeavor with chalk pastels: 50% contaminated (and growing). At first, I think she just trying to see if she could impress herself. But when she started impressing everyone around her, she started to put more pressure on herself to accurately render photos into chalk pastel drawings and has begun to consider sharing them on her Instagram, which I believe will only contaminate and paralyze her process further.
Artists who rote paint portraits of dogs for commission - 100% contaminated (artist is just tool for someone else’s desire to express their love for their pet).
Nine-year-old Casper’s art: 5% contaminated perhaps by the desire for his dad to put it up on the fridge or something.
I am not admonishing the work of trained, talented artists. I am simply trying to explain my deep admiration for (and slight envy of) people who “never learned to draw.” The works I’ve seen by untrained artists have been some of the most raw and provocative works of art I’ve ever seen in my life. I think the goal, as a trained artist with professional ambition, is to aim for purity, knowing you will never actually achieve it. To ignore one’s desire to be seen and appreciated and work at best, with the mentality of the trained recluse. I’ll never create pure art. By definition, one cannot aim for zero percent contamination. So in my process, I aim to satisfy only the desire to impress myself—I’d say that’s 30% contamination by desire and 70% pure self-expression.