Little note for those who already subscribed and got my last post: I will still gather my thoughts on the Art Retreat in Puglia. I just want to take my time to do that in a slow and meaningful way, reflecting and writing by hand instead of typing on a keyboard. It is still coming your way soon!

For years, Pinterest was my go-to place for visual inspiration. Don’t get me wrong, I still love it. I’d scroll through endless mood boards, saving color palettes, textures, and artworks that sparked something in me. It feels like an infinite well of creativity. But at some point, I felt ‘scrolled out’. I had the feeling I got a lot of recurrent images and not enough ‘fresh’ input. The algorithm pushed repetition, hoping that I would like the same images for the rest of my life. But that’s not how it works.

Yesterday, it just hit me when I was screenshotting another post on Substack. The work presented on this platform is like a breath of fresh air. There is an endless supply of new works and sketchbook entries, finished an unfinished, that amaze me every day. I have the feeling that it has something to do with the fact that more artists are less afraid to share the ‘unperfect’ or ‘unfinished’ stuff.

Sharing Life, Not Acting Life

There’s rawness here, honesty, and an openness that makes me want to pick up my brush or my notebook and create—not just consume. It reminds me of the evenings when I go drawing with a group of people in a local café. It’s real, some things work and are beautiful, but it can be messy and not really work out how you want it to as well. People are motivated to share some more intimate parts of the creative process when there is an atmosphere of acceptance. My best guess is that this incredibly supportive environment gives confidence to share the more vulnerable creative works and processes.

Let The Feed Feed us instead of Fill us

Where Instagram has evolved to just keep us scrolling for hours on end and Pinterest overwhelms us with a multitude of ‘people who did it better’, it is so nice to have found a platform that just lets us be and where individuality is celebrated and the process is loved. Also, the fact that there are no advertisements between posts even made me sigh of relief the first time I used the Substack app.

Please Substack, A New Function

I’d love to see Substack add a function to create separate and private ‘feeds’ where both words and images of other users can be saved (including the name of the creator). This way, you can group content that inspire you for various reasons. Would you use this function?

I woudn’t say I don’t love Pinterest anymore. It still has its uses, especially for gathering references quickly. ut for deep, meaningful inspiration—the kind that makes me actually want to experiment with new insights—Substack is where I get my fix now.

Talk soon,

Angéline