I Always Do it Like This
A while back I repainted some windows for one of my customers. We decided to try a new paint on the outside of the windows that would last longer and stay brighter. Or so we thought. A week or two later she called me and said that the window washer came by to clean the windows. When she saw that the washer was damaging the artwork, she tried to stop him. This was his reply. “I always do it like this.” Thankfully he stopped and it was not completely ruined. It only took a little while to fix it up again. But I couldn’t stop thinking about what the guy had said to her. “I always do it like this.” So here’s my thoughts on that. If you always do the same thing, eventually something is not going to work any more.
Through an art marketing course I have been taking, I have learned that the way I had approached my art biz was not working. The internet has become one of the most important forms of marketing for artists. Not only do people look for you through websites, now there’s an explosion of social media to follow! So one of the things I have been working on the most this year is my website. I had to do some major backtracking last month because, guess what, what I was doing was not a good fit any more. I had switched my web hosting to a different company and was disappointed when I found out that the tools I needed were not there. I pretty much had to start over in order to do what I thought would help me. So though it was a bit painful, (and I lost my other blog posts!) I know it will work much better for me now.
Of course, it’s not going to stop at the website. There will always be changes to be made, new tools to learn, new trends to keep up on. I think that if you’re not doing that, you’ll become stagnant. And now I need to start trying some new ways to paint windows! I think that trying new strategies and ideas applies to washing windows, painting them, becoming a better dancer, marketing your art and just growing as a person. So here’s to another fresh start!