Greetings from a swealtering Yorkshire! We are currently Jsut coming out of a heatwave and the temperature has been difficult enough for everyone here but it’s not been as hot as it was down south and of course, other countries. On the upside, it took about 5 minutes for my little bits of dyeing to dry! I don’t dye much really, but I’d forgotten how lovely the colours can be, I may have to find an excuse to do a bit more.

I’m in a period of finishing off things and waiting for others to start so I don’t have June photos but I have been thinking about something. Quelle surprise! Moi? 😁

I just became aware of feeling tired of seeing so much art on social media. Inspiration slowly turned into fatigue and flatness, and I have come to understand that seeing more doesn’t necessarily mean receiving more.

My AI app offered a metaphor which I found quite useful – the nervous system experiencing all this visual content as continuous intake without digesting it – the equivalent of highly salted/sugary food that doesn’t really nourish. We kid ourselves and make excuses and… ooh it’s hard when it comes to food (especially chocolate buttons) and basically we crave another exciting art image in much the same way. I always rather hoped looking at fine art meant I would be above the wiles of the algorithm but it’s dastardly ways are cunning!

Our brain adapts really quickly to novelty so when social feeds deliver endless streams of high-impact images, it normalizes this super fast and this is the reason why what once felt exciting starts to feel noisy or emotionally flat. I do feel late to the party with this particular insight, but perhaps better late than never!

We are consuming far more art than humans ever have. In the past, we considered work in slower, spaced-out ways such as galleries, books, conversations or studio visits. Now it’s possible to see thousands of polished works in an hour! I’d not really given this enough thought and I know sometimes I’ve felt ‘what’s the point of going there or buying that book when I can see what passes as enough on a screen?’ This point alone has really made me think about taking more time to digest and not narrow my experiences. I still have very positive memories of past gallery visits. They just stick.

Flatness can also happen because when one thinks I’m ‘simply looking’, part of the mind is still actually comparing and ranking a lot of things such as skills or techniques and that low-grade unconscious evaluation gets exhausting.

So how to nourish myself more?

Social platforms are designed to maximize engagement whatever we choose to view, art included, and they prioritise:

novelty over continuity

reaction over contemplation

production over incubation

visibility over inwardness

As an artist, I want to welcome all of the above within creative practice, but the culture of speed and attention reward on social media platforms places no value on the things down the right.

Just as we need a balanced diet, I know I need one here. I think technology has so much to offer but I would like to rebalance my attention on imagary that unfolds slowly, or lingers, or deepens my attention by revisiting and reflecting.

If we don’t allow some slowness, deeper consideration or unresolved thoughts, what is so readily and copiously available as inspiration or influence remains surface level. I think that’s what I have been recognising.

I’m a compulsive collector of digital images which I keep by artist in folders. It’s amazing to have this content at our disposal, it really is. But more isn’t necessarily better. I have collected a lot of content in a rather ‘fast food’ way and have too big a library. It needs reducing so I can focus more on artists and images which make me question, celebrate, help me learn or see something a new way, for example.

So I’m going to do a few things to ingest imagery in a more nourishing way:

Really delve into a few well-chosen images to see what they have to offer me

Write more notes

Collect less content

Limit fast intake of art on social media

Do more gallery visits, probably buy a book

And leave more room and trust for my own internal imagery to arrive.

If your social platforms are full of wonderful art like mine is, but you’re feeling the same, perhaps ‘less is more’ might help for a bit?

‘Truly meaningful artistic experiences do not merely add information to you — they subtly alter how you see, what you notice, what you feel is real, and eventually what you are capable of making.

A nourished perception is not necessarily more dramatic. It is more alive.’