Blogging is not art.

When creating art, I never create it for other people, it should always be for me. It’s a personal representation of how I see the world.

Creating art based on what I believe others want is called ‘playing to the gallery’. Art is about individual expression, communicating something from within me to the outside world. The moment an artist creates what they believe others want, they compromise themselves, their message and the clarity of their work.

My most popular image on Pinterest is not my best work. My most viewed blog posts are not the greatest recipes or constructed with my most eloquent prose. They’re the content which the audience wants, like a simple recipe for mint yoghurt or a how-to guide on smoking tofu. None of these would feature if I ever created a ‘Best Of Gavin Wren’ album.

Therein lies the rub. Blogging is a place where, unusually, quality is not always celebrated. The requirements of the reader, AKA the gallery, determine what is popular. Therefore, popularity can actually be gained by playing to the gallery.

Perhaps that’s the difference, blogging is akin to mass media, rather than art. Successful blogging is not an art form, nor is it a pure creative endeavour. It requires many inputs which are highly stifling, artistically, such as marketing, web coding and administration.