mailing List Archives – Emma Cownie

20 Sale off Emma Cownie paintings until 14th October 2024 with code

Have you seen this Apple advert? Take a moment to watch it. It makes my blood run cold. Surprisingly the tech bros at Apple thought it was a good idea to show this advert which depicts a tower of creative tools and analog items (like paint, trumpets and record players), being crushed into the form of the iPad. It’s a pretty grim vision of the future. It a good visual metaphor for what is happening to creatives right now.

This year has been the toughest year I have experienced as an artist, for a myriad of reasons, and the art market seems to be struggling generally. Yes there’s war in Ukraine and the Middle East (and elsewhere in the world) and “the Cost of Living Crisis” and terrible cold and wet weather in the British Isles hasn’t helped either.

It seems evident that it’s more difficult getting my work seen. I cant help but think that AI and the “enshitification of the internet” is at least partly responsible. I feel a bit like I am being slowly crushed by the Apple crusher. It’s sapping my creative juices. I don’t quite know what to do about it. Cory Doctorow explains how enshittification works “It’s a three-stage process: first, platforms are good to their users. Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, there is a fourth stage: they die.”

This is probably the reason why I can’t find any useful results on google – lots of top ranking website are full of AI nonsense. It’s also why fewer people are seeing my work on the internet. My posts are pretty much hidden on Facebook, Instagram and invisible on X. Images of my paintings do not show up on Google as much as they did say 3 or even 6 months ago. Many other artists report a similar decline in interest from potential customers.

I have started to visit my local library again in search of real books with in- depth facts. The only decent thing on Google these days is Wikipedia. I find that Youtube playlists are so random as to be useless and a search on Pinterest results in either pins I have seen before (in other words I have already saved them) or one unrelated to the search term I just used. Tech companies are burning up the planet with their massive data centres in the hope that one of them will “win” the AI battle and then charge us all for what used to be better quality and free.

What’s this got to do with you? Everything. Doctorow says that enshittification is coming for all industries. “From Mercedes effectively renting you your accelerator pedal by the month to Internet of Things dishwashers that lock you into proprietary dish soap, enshittification is metastasising into every corner of our lives. Software doesn’t eat the world, it just enshittifies it.” Think about your printer – a new printer is cheap as chips but the ink costs a fortune and you cant use non-proprietary ink and your printer will know, and refuse to work.

Corry Doctorow’s big hope is that “Stein’s Law will take hold: anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop…if everyone is threatened by enshittification, then everyone has a stake in disenshittification.” Actually, there’s a lot more to it than that. You’ll have to read his articles to find out what USA and EU are planning to do to break the monopolies of the big tech comapnies.

I just hope that independent artists like me survive the process or else everyone will have to console themselves with souless AI-derived art their ipad/smartphone/tablet device instead.

See below for some scary examples of AI “Art”. It’s a nonsense view of Derry if you didn’t know.

“Painting of Derry City by Emma Cownie” – Thanks AI. I can give up now. NOT.

Just in case some of you are saying. It’s Londonderry not Derry. AI is no better at conjuring up a view of Londonderry. Take a look! Although there is a river this time.

“Painting of Londonderry City by Emma Cownie”

How about Three Cliffs Bay? I have painted that many times. Sure AI will do better at ripping me off. Well, no.

Painting of Three Cliff Bay by Emma Cownie – Yes, it looks NOTHING like Three Cliffs Bay

Yes, we can laugh at AI’s efforts and say they look nothing like those places or my paintings but it’s all doing damage. AI can never replace human creativity. AI cannot suffer and struggle like humans. It just produces a wierd pastiche of the thing it is meant to be. It’s expensive rubbish. It’s costing us dearly. Emissions from data centers of the likes of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple may be 7.62 times higher than they let on.

We can reverse the enshittification of the internet. Don’t accept those tracking cookies. Try a different search engine. Stay on the website rather than downloading apps (you can use ad blockers on the website you can’t on the app). Don’t buy everything via Amazon if you can buy it in a real life shop.

We can halt the creeping enshittification of every digital device. Put down your phone/tablet and read a book or look at a painting made by a real human being. Join artists’ mailing lists so you can still follow their work no matter what the big platforms do to hide their work.

Oh, did I mention I have a 20% off sale on? Starting Sunday until Monday 14th. You have to join my mailing list for the code 20% code but you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shifting Shadows on Three Cliffs Bay (Gower) Context — Shifting Shadows on Three Cliffs Bay (Gower) -Emma Cownie which is also in the sale (with the code)

Read more

Cory Doctorow on Enshittification of the Internet – https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/27/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse/

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/sep/15/data-center-gas-emissions-tech

I had been a professional artist for four years before I realized that I had been missing a really big trick. I wasn’t cultivating my mailing list. I had a small collection of email addresses that my website provided kindly collected for me, but I didn’t really do much with them. I didn’t do anything at all, in fact.

This was a serious mistake. I was avoiding working out how to use an automated mailing list provider because I had hadn’t had the time or energy to immerse myself into finding out about aspects of social media, which was to me “new” technology. Don’t laugh. I wasn’t until quite recently that I “got” Pinterest or Instagram.

Now, younger people are probably shaking their heads at this. My niece famously said that the mini ipad I had on loan from the school I was working for at the time was wasted on me. She was probably right. I didn’t have the time. I was either preparing lessons, marking or painting. In 2016 I left teaching and I dedicated a lot of time to finding out how online stuff worked (not just facebook and twitter). It took a lot of effort but it was worth it.

This was vital for taking control of my own marketing and developing long-term and (importantly) direct relationship with collectors. Online galleries may bring you one-off sales, but they don’t seem to be terribly good growing repeat customers. Yet, I knew from experience that relationships & friendships, I had developed via Facebook and Twiter, and increasingly on Instagram, encouraged art collectors to support my work on a regular basis.

How many times have you had someone tell you that they “love your work but can’t buy it right now?” The mailing list is a way in which you can keep those potential collectors in touch with what you are doing. Some collectors start off with small paintings and come back and buy larger ones. It’s also about trust. If fans get to know you through your work and your stories they will become emotionally invested in your continuing success. People buy from those they trust. Most importantly, for you, it is your list. It doesn’t belong to the online gallery, Facebook or Instagram.

Where to start? Collect names and email addresses – at craft-fairs, exhibitions, from people who have bought your work in the past. You do need their explicit permission to email them or else you are breaking EU GDPR anti-spam laws.

Sign up for online marketing platform – I use Mailchimp.com (it’s free for mailing list under 2,000 names). I find not find it easy to work out how to use it but I watch a lot of Youtube videos and read articles on Pinterest and I got there in the end. There are also others to choose from such as Aweber.com and Tinyletter.com. These sites also provide pop up/sign up forms that you can link to your website or blog.

You can offer free downloads of a catalog, book, or print to encourage sign-ups (not a colouring-in page).

It’s not about the hard sell. Subscribers want to hear your latest news, the inside story on life as an artist. I have to remind myself that not everyone uses facebook, twitter and instagram or follow my blog and my newsletters are often a summary of the sort of content that is published on those platforms. A fair bit of content is similar to what I blog about, but not exactly the same.

As with social media – be consistent. Send out your newsletter regularly, whether that means twice a year or twice a month.

Ideas for content

New Paintings

Recent Sales

Discount codes

Exhibitions (setting up, behind the scenes, opening night)

Photos of paintings in collectors’ homes

Commissions

Customer testimonials

Video

Work-in-Progress photographs (the “sneak peek”)

Remind people of your story “about me”, how I came to be an artist

New products – e.g. prints, greeting cards, tea-towels, online courses, ebooks

Encourage subscribers to follow you on other platforms

Inspirations – such as other artists or locations that inspire you

Revisit old work

Encourage subscribers to follow you on other platforms (as the content is not identical on Instagram or facebook).

Failures and challenges (hard though it can be to admit these, people like to see you overcome minor difficulties, you are human after all).

Review of Art products

Business tips for artists (quite a few artists sign up to artist’s newsletters)

Finally, remember not to put in too much. It’s not a newspaper. You want collectors to visit your website. It also needs to be visually appealing (canva.com is useful for this), have a consistent brand feel to you. You also need to proof-read it carefully!

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The Art of the Mailing List