This is a journal entry edited and expanded for
you all to read; I edited it for readability.

Instagram, and Facebook too, have been a game changer for me.

I work full-time and run a business with Mitchell restoring/conserving various types of objects.  This keeps me busy, sometimes working 6-7 days a week if there is a deadline, so there is not much time to drop into painting a canvas, making handmade paper (my paper is shown in the painted piece left), or other types of my earlier creative endeavors.

For a person who is still working in our business and is not a full time artist (where I would be pursuing a gallery, etc.) to be completely blocked from posting on IG or FB is devastating.

Watercolors, and especially watercolors in sketchbooks which are explorations and sometimes lead to a more “serious” or thoroughly designed watercolor, saved me.  I don’t know what I would have done without this outlet.

Anyone can glibly say they make art for themselves, but it is not quite true.  At some point they want to share what they do, and that is part of the joy of creating, sharing your creations!  How do I interpret this?  When I am in my creative space, I am not thinking about sharing what I am doing, with few exceptions.

I am usually working toward an idea or simply playing around with color or line or texture, and I also journal my feelings about whatever is going on internally in my art journal.  Much of what I do is never seen by anyone other than Mitchell, such as the Yahrzeit piece I did about missing my brother Patrick, RIP, left.

With commissions I straddle a line, because they came to me.  I assume they know my style, and I have the parameters of what they need, but even when I am working on commission, I am working for myself first — they did come to me, after all.

Being able to talk to other artists on IG or FB is such a joy.  I am inspired by what I see them doing, and hope I inspire them too.  Sometimes there is a dialogue between us.  As I have mostly been a recluse when making art, this is wonderful.

Sometimes I participate in challenges through IG/FB, which are fun.

So when, for absolutely no reason I can fathom, I was blocked from IG, I was gutted, especially as they did not how long this banning would last. 

They accused me of posting just to gain followers (wow if I knew how to do that wouldn’t that be grand?)  BTW, isn’t that part of what you want on IG?  Isn’t punishing someone for trying to gain followers weird?  Either way, it wasn’t what I did.  A friend asked a question, I posted what you see in the IG spanking, right, and I had no recourse.

When I went to my page, it looked like they erased my followers, those I followed, and my posts, though it still mentioned I had posted 2,713 images (see screen shot left). 

Two days in they asked me if I had anything to say about all this and I answered, above.  When I hit send, “they” told me they were not taking comments from me.  Very strange.  “Why’d you ask, assholes?”

It depressed and stressed me.  Did I want to bother with this again, were I given the chance.  If some AI bot (which is my guess) chose to block me for this, and gave me no recourse (Zucker says they don’t have money for these things, and that is utter BS, if the many ads I get in my feed is any indication) then why should engage in the beast?

I was still on FB, but oddly, my Linked in was also blocked.  When I went to that page on my computer it showed me the Meta spanking shown above right.

I considered moving back to large pieces again and not sharing, working in private, saving them until I had time to pursue a gallery showing of some sort in several years.

The problem is, when I was doing the larger pieces I had time (I wasn’t working for a few years) and so I could sketch then drop into painting canvases or large sheets at a time, and make a series, like my family portraits, below.  I can’t see that happening right now.

Being creative is something you have to make space for.  You invite the muse in and sometimes it involves being quiet and still and receptive.  I got a little lost when I was doing these large canvases, in a good way.

I had a little bit more hope when I found out Mitchell could see my page correctly, and they had not erased my information.  And now a week later, they have restored my access.

But here is the other bigger issue: IG is where many people sell their creative items: books, art, etc.  This ability to just pull the rug out from under them is not okay, and should be regulated.  I am writing my representatives now to make sure this happens, especially since one company has a monopoly on two HUGE platforms, and has designed it to be that way by buying out competitors.

What are your thoughts?  (I hope this is a safe place as I’m not tagging any of these companies, so as not to get the “Eye of Sauron” on this post!)

☾
©D. Katie Powell
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