Art, Instagram, and Finding Meaning in the 21st Century

Copyright Addison Prentice 2020

Dear Steve, 

Instagram is a magical place, albeit a digital one. But you already know this. Not a magical place in the fairytale Disney sense, but more of a magical black hole of time and expression for better or for worse. 

I reminisce about the days when getting a couple dozen likes on a given post was considered a feat, and influencer marketing was the exception rather than the norm. Scrolling through pictures, memes and short videos is, objectively speaking, a waste of time; however, being able to reach out to those whose profiles we stumble across and admire in a consolidated manner is undeniably convenient. 

One thing I have come to notice over the past couple of years is that if you take a step back and look at Instagram from a cynical perspective, the lines between self expression and advertising become blurred, even for those of us ‘normal’ folk who do not hold influencer status. 

One heralded among younger generations as a visual means of identifying what is going on within one’s life at that moment in time, Instagram has slowly but surely become a means of building a personal brand, and thus advertisement, which aims to persuade and signal how we want to be perceived by others. 

With this being said, it is no wonder that increasing amounts of posts have become risque or political, or sometimes both. Last week I saw a post by an old female friend of mine, who I follow out of respect for a once close relationship, that contained a picture of her wearing close to no clothing in the wilderness of Wyoming with a caption reminding others to vote in the upcoming presidential election. The trip to Wyoming happened weeks, if not months, prior.  

It is this type of superficial marketing that has become mainstream within the social media platform’s world, when nothing you see can be taken at face value if you spend more than five seconds of critical thought on any given post. Exploitation is the name of the game, especially when keeping in mind the algorithms of the platform in relation to sponsored posts. 

Now Steve, I realize that I am coming across as highly cynical, but this is where things get more positive, I promise. There is a way to reconstruct the algorithm in your favor and take control over your feed. 

I’ve always been interested in painting and the visual arts. I took art classes throughout my education, and recently have delved deeper into the world of Adobe Photoshop after finally saving up enough money to buy a nice Sony camera. After graduating college I naively thought that building up a career in the corporate realm would be enough to satisfy me and bring me contentment. 

Needless to say, I was wrong. Subconsciously I’ve always needed a creative outlet and new sources of inspiration, much like how you, I would presume, gain inspiration from reading given your position. Point being is that I never used Instagram as a means for creative inspiration because I never found it necessary, at least until the last year or so. 

I followed one artist, Jack Shure, by sheer dumb luck a little over a year ago. One of his paintings was shared by an acquaintance of mine from college, and I immediately found his method of Grisaille shading and painting mesmerizing. I scrolled through his feed briefly and found that he promoted one of his artist buddies, Cur1yj, in a post, so I followed him too. From there the sponsored posts started rolling in. 

Instead of feeling annoyed by the sponsored posts cluttering my feed and exploiting my sexual preferences as a heterosexual male as I had in the past, I felt oddly rejuvenated. Seeing art galleries like Avant Gallery and artists such as Mitchell Johnson promoting their best work was as visually stimulating as seeing a scantily clad woman. 

It was tantalizing, and I began to feel as if my creative spark had been reignited. Once burning strong, it had become a flame doused years prior by family and false societal expectations. 

Within a week or two I had visited my local Michaels and picked up the paint, paintbrushes, and canvases once again, determined to create. Humans are meant to be creators Steve, and I believe this is the ideal headspace for our species. As the great actor Ethan Hawke once said, “The closer we are to what we love, the more we are revealed to ourselves.” 

Long story short, I felt like myself again. No longer using Instagram as so many do as a brief escape from the mundane corporate lifestyle, I conducted an audit of those I follow and replaced many unnecessary profiles with artists, curators, and galleries dedicated to simply showing the work of the human imagination.

The world is full of imaginative people, but life, health, and economic circumstances have their way of taking a toll on one’s spirit as we grow older. I only recently discovered this unfortunate fact through a recently diagnosed lifelong vein disease. 

Creativity feeds on walking the tightrope between imagination and reality, and when we feel hopeless the rope steers too far into reality. I find myself painting almost every day in the evenings now, and although I may never hold the following that many primetime artists do, it doesn’t matter. I am once again a creator of things, rather than simply a witness. 

Our hands are meant to build, to manipulate, and to physically articulate the innate creativity that lies within each of us, and I cannot express enough the sense of urgency that arises every morning when I scroll through artists posts and a firehose of inspiration comes gushing into my brain. 

If there is a point or lesson to be learned by reading this Steve, it is that, in my opinion, more people would be satisfied with their lives if they spent more time doing instead of witnessing. 

The longer we look at others rather than looking at ourselves, the more hopeless we feel. Conversely, the more time we spend actively creating what we love and what we seek from the world, other’s actions and lifestyles matter less and less. To paraphrase the cliche notion, you can’t take money with you when you die, and additionally you can’t take your experiences with you either. It is possible to leave what you have created behind though, and that should be satisfying enough to get started. 

Thank you for your time,

Addison Prentice