Who I Am and Why I’m Here
This feels like a pre-New Year’s start of a brand new chapter, and I’m treating it like one.
Thanks for stopping by Melanie Biehle Art, my brand new newsletter/blog for my fine art business. I’m writing this intro post before I bring my current newsletter subscribers over to join me, so I wanted to tell you what I shared with them earlier today — why I’m creating this space and what’s going to be here.
Rather than continue to have a separate email newsletter and blog I’ve decided to combine them into one Substack publication. I’ve been wanting to start sharing more off of Instagram for a while and Substack makes that easier by merging newsletters and blogs into one thing.
I’m planning to write to you about once a week. My goal is to be on Instagram less and dedicate this space as my primary form of communication about my art, what I’m currently working on, upcoming art events, and what I’m feeling inspired by or obsessing over.
This is not weekly sharing just to be sharing. I haven’t been great about consistently sharing what goes into creating my painting collections. Lately, I’ve been more likely to just send a message or post a collection and tell others about it once it is ready. I think being more intentional about sharing along the way will be good for me as an artist and anyone who collects my art. I want you to know me and my work and what propels me to create it.
Committing to showing up for you once a week makes me more thoughtful in my day-to-day work and time. I’m not just throwing something on Instagram stories never to be seen or thought of again. I’m creating a record. A path leading through all of the art that I make. This is what I want my journey to feel and look like.
I want to know that the people who are interested in my work are actually going to be able to know about it. You may or may not be aware of this (I wasn't until this week), but the Meta Verified feature on Instagram is more than just a checkmark by your name. It's actually a new subscription plan that can increase your reach (among other basic things like "customer service" which anyone who uses anything should have, IMO.)
Honestly, if Meta had been doing a decent job at all with showing people my posts before they came up with this, I would have gladly paid for their subscription program. I like Instagram and have always wanted to be there. But I am NOT interested in paying to have someone else decide which of my followers get to see my work. I have more than 6500 people on Instagram who have chosen to follow me there and only about 200 of them ever see any given post or story, AT MOST. So I'm not really able to share or grow my business there anymore.
Which brings me to another reason for my move to Substack...GROWTH. To be a professional artist means that you have to be able to sell your art. That means you have to keep introducing your work to new people as well as continue to share with people who already know and love your work.
Instagram used to be the top way new people would find out about my art and hire me to work with them, but that hasn't been the case for some time now. My hope is that in moving my blog/newsletter to Substack I can connect with some new people who might appreciate my art. The type of people who aren’t turned off by actually reading and looking at static images vs. scrolling through quick-cut, loud, five-second videos.
I have no desire to “build an audience.” I’m looking to share what I create with people who will love it. And that way of sharing for me is thoughtfully and slowly.
I’m looking forward to writing about the people and things that are inspiring me with direct links to where you can find them and not have them disappear after 24 hours. I have been feeling so excited about the art that I have been creating this year, but less excited about sharing it in the same way that I’ve been doing for so long now. I hope that this is a fresh start of sorts. I’m excited about being here and getting to know you in this space.
If there is anything you’d like me to share more about in my weekly newsletters, please reach out and let me know!