https://www.patreon.com/davidvangough
After years of tooth pulling, badgering, and puppy herding, I’ve finally relented to the litany of encouraging voices from peers, friends and the misses, and boarded the Patreon train.
And you know what, I’m actually full steaming head and beside myself with excitement at the prospect of it.
For some time now, I’ve sensed that the blog format was becoming the web equivalent of the old Jalopy coasting into town on fumes, and that posting art on social media- beset as it is now by an obstacle course of assaulting algorithms raging through troll farms in flame throwing battle zones- was becoming lost in pay to play visibility and the daily dreadline news blanket.
Something had to give…and something finally has.
So I’m offering up my working process, and bringing it directly to an engaging, attentive audience. And depending on the subscription, for patrons it means a grab bag of goodies, from inception to finished canvas, documented as concepts happen, through initial sketches to timelapses, along with narrated documentary style video. For myself, it broadens the potential artists have now in this post Covid world, of reaching their target followers, and providing an assemblage of compelling media content to become curators of their own creative process.
What does that mean for this blog then? Well, after over a decade of posting, the cold, hard reality in terms of actual feedback, hit counters and residual sales, is that there was never a huge readership. That’s been compounded further as the internet has gravitated away from the literate broadsheet to mindlessly scrolling clickbait and the tweeted soundbyte.
Try as I might to justify it’s continuity by providing testimony for some possible interested legacy, feels even less germane given the tastes of those arbitrating the future now.
Of course, I’ll still continue to occasionally post to make general announcements here from time to time, and maybe at some juncture-like vinyl, the blog will enjoy a resurgence, but for now, if you liked everything that has gone before, and want to see it’s next evolution and continue to follow my thoughts, my process and my art updates, you can click the link, above or below.
Look forward to seeing you on the other side.
