Hola & Aloha Flickr!

How exciting I have just set up a fabulous new Flickr photostream (http://www.flickr.com/photos/trudiescrumptious/) with which to exhibit my wares! Now I feel like I am just pimping myself out across the internet.

First there was the website for my paintings which was a little neglected for a while, it has to be said. My paintings website www.trudiemoore.co.uk was made by the wonderful Hype Digital and sat mostly dormant for a good part of around 4 years while I carried on my day job in which time the internet changed dramatically. I use the main website as a gallery and online portfolio and a place for people to discover me (but hopefully not with plagiarism in mind!) and to record my work, but it would never replace active marketing for my paintings - paintings are something that buyers need to see in the flesh to get an idea for the quality and feel of the work. Having said that, though, the internet is essential for artists because in this day and climate we need to harness the broadest audience.

It was earlier in the year this year that I decided that things had moved on and I'd better keep up or lose out. And so I decided to try to get back on some websites for artists - and so started Wotartist and Madeinleicestershire - perfect, a couple of online galleries, one very local and the other one international - and if I manage to get back onto Axis Arts then that will be the National gap filled. It was at this point I thought I would track all this activity using Google Analytics - to see who was visiting my site and from where. I got a little bit obsessed with this for a while as having googled Trudie Moore I wanted to see whether people were landing on my website having known they were looking for an artist or if they really thought they were going to get a hypnosis CD from an Aussie medium. I also wanted to assess what parts of the site they were looking at and what paintings were being looked at and for how long, whether or not they found me by searching for artists or something else.

And it didn't stop there, next stop was this blog - I felt that I wanted to talk about more than simply paintings, I wanted to talk about design, photography, my inspirations and the latest activity - printing. And then I thought - hell why not, Twitter - let's see what that's all about - any business that's serious does Twitter these days and that's what I'm trying to be - serious and businesslike and so my Twitter name is - oh - TTScrumptious...

Next stop a Facebook group - called, yes you've got it - Trudie Scrumptious. I don't know why I didn't do this sooner - I have been playing on Facebook and joining groups for ages - mostly ones that are a little irreverant and a bit un-PC - but then I started to use some that had a bit of meaning and more recently joining groups that are incubator businesses , like mine (a little bit of back scratching for creative kinds). So last on the list at the moment is Flickr - another outlet for the paintings and one that can focus on photography too - I thought that this could just be a huge library of my wares, photography and paintings but at the moment I've not made a decision on exactly what I will do with it, probably I will take new photos of my existing paintings in situ to give people an idea of how my paintings look in homes - or even bars who knows! All I know is that the more presence I have, the more hits.

If you are reading this then it's all working, don't be afraid to get in touch by any of my media options but really what I hope is that I will see you in a cafe or a gallery soon and we can be real contacts and not online ones. There is no substitute for a real painting seen on the wall before your very eyes making your retinas tingle - we can all have beautiful virtual lives but the real world one is far more exciting and inspiring!