Why did artists start treating their websites and social media so differently from how they behave in person?

The problem is that artists are creatives blessed with natural talent and education in composition, color, and visual design. When you see your website or social media, your brain treats it like a blank canvas or a camera viewfinder—you know exactly what to do with that, and you have great ideas. But those ideas aren’t proven ideas for selling art; they’re creative ideas that go against established fact and the proven paradigm of how art is viewed and purchased. Artists turn into corporate entities the second they hit publish, using filtered photos and captions that sound like ad agencies wrote them, subject lines from generic templates—none of which would ever happen at a real gallery opening. The chitchat at an opening is messy, personal, specific, funny, warm. It rambles about who you are and what’s going on in your life, then talks about the art. That’s what your online presence should sound like too.

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Asked by a general artist audience · Answered by Patrick (inferred from context) · art-marketing-podcast · 2026-05-19