Confesssions of an extreme introvert

I’m not an over-sharer. Apparently I’m not even an average sharer. I’m an open and honest kind of person — in person, with people I know pretty well. But I don’t tell strangers in the grocery store or at a cocktail party what I had for lunch. It’s not that I am a particularly “private” person. It’s that I can’t imagine that they really give a shit about what I had for lunch. Why would they care? I don’t care what they ate either!

This unpopular and frankly curmudgeonly attitude is at odds with what might be considered half or even three-quarters of the modern artist’s job: PR. Public Relations. Publicity. Tooting your own horn. Promoting your work. Getting it “out there.” Frankly, I suck at it.

That’s why, after 3 years of having a blog, there are only about a dozen entries. My time is valuable (to me at least, maybe not to anyone else!) and when faced with the choice of “make art” or “talk about making art,” well, to me that’s not a choice at all. And I have this deep down conviction that one should not talk about oneself too much — it’s the hallmark of the boor. I have an acute sense of embarrassment and shame when I publish something on Facebook or Tumblr. Like I’m calling attention to myself. Well, I am, aren’t I? My mother taught me that was in bad taste, and I know the standards have changed, but I haven’t been able to remove my mother from my head.

Of course this is extremely inconvenient for me, because I live on a dead end road, 15 miles from the nearest small town, work at home, and have never enjoyed small talk or the bar scene. Thus my current state of isolation. Isolation is great in moderation. People don’t drop by and interrupt me very often. Ok, never. I have days/months/years on end to follow a train of thought. [Sometimes that train drops me off in a place so weird that no one can understand what I’m talking about.]

So, after several years of trying to make myself write blog posts regularly, and failing miserably, I have decided to work within the constraints of my personality type (or defect, however you want to see it) and just post pictures. And I am going to try to post them more often. How else will anyone see the work? If you want to discuss the work with me, ask questions or comment, please do! Write me an email — or if you’re on my new website [http://jcoxart.weebly.com/], you can leave a comment!