relationship

For a few months – more than I intended as it turned out – I had a trial relationship with Facebook. I set up a page associated with this site, for the sole purpose of nudging readers over to explore its contents. It didn’t take long for the page to gather almost 500 followers, meaning folk who liked the page itself, not just the posts.

Several things happened. I discovered the existence of two separate audiences for my blogs – those who use FB and those who don’t – and noticed how different these audiences are; I learned that putting up good  material on FB (which I endeavoured to do on a daily basis) was no guarantee that anyone would click through to the website – in fact the average was about one per week; I noticed that it became somewhat stressful to ‘feed’ the page and monitor the activity;  and further, I learned that FB was not actually showing the page to its followers in their feeds. Why? Because I wouldn’t give them $ to do so. I grew weary of the constant harping for payment to “optimise” my posts.

In short, I realised that the cyber-world of blogging is much more satisfying to me.  While I will always value my FB friends and continue to use my personal timeline as a noticeboard for the things that are important to me, I am making the return to the deeper and more rewarding blogosphere.

Sean Scully‘s video is a good example of the kind of post that I’d have shared on the now-retired FB page. It’s an apt one for my post today, because he too realises that creativity and painting (and life) is all about relationship. But there’s so much more. Whether you appreciate his work or not, his observations are worth consideration. I love the way he speaks of his obsession with “repairing the world”, and how he wants his work to express “a kind of subjective universality” rather than “telling stories.” How knowledge + craft = freedom. These notions are in alignment with all that this site, and yours truly, values.

If you landed on this page via an email notification or social media link, it probably won’t be obvious that the site has had a complete overhaul – including a new theme. The ‘home’ page is now a portal that makes the enormous amount of material in the archives more readily accessible:
theawakenedeye.com
Feedback is most welcome!

Relevant reading: how painting can help to change the world, actually