Re-imagining the artist's web-site

It is some nine years since I first launched my web-site, gordonaitcheson.com. Over the years it has evolved, of course, but it serves the much the same purpose as it did back in 2005. Essentially, it has been my own gallery space where visitors can browse work for sale and from time to time hopefully make a purchase. The aesthetic of my current web-site is intended to be simple, clean and minimalist, little text with the emphasis on the images of the work itself. And it has served its purpose.

But in recent years I have also made increasing use of social media, principally Twitter, Flickr and Blogger to also talk beyond the finished pieces, about my works in progress and share my wider artistic interests and influences with other artists and collectors alike. This has proved to be fertile territory, vibrant with the benefits of the interaction, while the web-site has steadily become more and more static.

So now I think it is time for a radical re-design, to re-invigorate my web-site by expanding the content  and incorporating the lessons of social media. I envisage a kind of gesamtkunstwerk with news of current projects, including sketchbook studies, working papers and other material which help explain my creative process, as well as other related information which I think might be of interest to visitors to the site. There will still be a gallery for potential purchasers to browse but the emphasis will be on what I am up to now! I want the visitors to my site to have a reason to keep coming back.

The re-design and build of the web-site is under way, but I would welcome any input from fellow artists or followers of my work, new and old.

January Diptych

Staring out at the garden the other week, my attention was caught by the sight of a solitary apple doggedly hanging on one of the very old apple trees in the garden. Despite all the wind and rain over the past few weeks this one rosy red apple was clinging on to its slender branch when all its remaining brethren from this last crop lay strewn over the grass. The birds had been eaten some and others were going brown as they gradually went to mush but this one crimson fruit stood out against the pale blue winter sky. But then I noticed that the first snowdrops of the year were beginning to emerge under the apple tree and I was struck by the juxtaposition. I think it just might make an interesting diptych.

Yesterday I finished the first study (20 x 20 cm.) celebrating the apple's rage against the dying of the light.

And today I began the second.... to be continued.

Postscript - that lone apple hung on until the very last week of March!