Why I Let My TikTok Die (temporarily)
Technology has an incredible way to connect people, increasing the speed of communication, providing access to ideas and concepts formerly impossible to imagine, and has almost completely erased the idea of waiting.
Sharing my art online has been an incredible experience. Thousands of people have been able to share in my journey and work that ordinarily would have never come across it. I've made lifelong artist friends, commiserating with one another on this sometimes hellish path. It's given me the opportunity to participate in art shows. I think most of all it's given me the encouragement that I need to keep trying to better my work and not to give up during the rough patches.
On the flip-side of this, there's an invariable pressure to keep up with it. Some amazing work nowadays is never discovered because their artists aren't "social savvy", or have a website that isn't easy to navigate. There comes a little internal voice that has become intertwined with the algorithm that forces you into a constant content state. If there aren't pictures or a cute clip, did it really even happen? It's the two-pronged curse that unless careful has the tendency to snowball into something that's incredibly difficult to keep up with, both real and imagined.
Since joining the social art movement three years ago, I have shared progress, process, completed work and concepts. I've livestreamed from my desk, shared my personal story and sold prints worldwide. At the end of 2025, I had almost come to the end of my piece KEEPSIES, and my next idea had started to form. These two things were happening simultaneously, I was slowly forming my next concept, and diligently completing my five-month-long piece. I'd been sharing updates of my work in progress regularly, and had put myself in a state of feeling like I had to draw and share simultaneously. It became an 'I had nothing to share because I hadn't drawn' type situation. By the time KEEPSIES was completed, I had an entire three-piece concept ready to go. Having a new idea to work on is such a feeling. It's curiosity, challenge and patience all marinated in a total state of excitement.
Of course the minute I started working on ENTROPY, I wanted to share every little detail online and let people follow along in the journey. But this time it felt different. I can't say whether it was due to nervousness around what I had set out to do, or just a serious want to protect the progress of an idea I had been forming for months. I had a feeling of wanting to be alone in the process, without any sense of having to rush, push out content or convince anyone of my concept. When I looked at my concept as a whole, I really started to consider what kind of impact these three pieces would have if the first time people see them, they see them as I intended, a completed series. Not showing a progress piece and letting the mind wander at its potential or what it could become, but leaning into the absolute drama of saying, here, look at these three things that I've worked on for the past year.
Of course the little algorithm induced voice in my head was mortified!
"How can you expect to succeed without sharing new work for A YEAR!?!"
But the more I sat with the idea, the better it felt. Don't get me wrong. It's been hard to do. Sharing my art has felt like sending little love letters into the ether and I really get a lot from it. I haven't been able to completely hide them because I haven't developed TOTAL self-control. I've taken videos and process pictures, and even drafted the reels I will eventually post once I'm done. But for now the process has been a solitary one and it has felt nice to create something with zero pressure on the content scale.
When I think ahead, it's also a way for me to create a little nest egg of things to share with you all once I start my next trilogy, INTRA, which of course, is fully conceptualised and raring to go!
So yes, I've entered into a self-imposed confinement (mostly) because I never want the pursuit of success to outshine the reason I'm doing this in the first place. I have soooo much to share with you all and really just can't wait to show you what's been bouncing around my desk this year.
R
