July Art News: updated website and recent sales

Two posts in one month! What is the world coming to?

It’s been a busy month, and I don’t want to miss the opportunity to announce my newly updated website front end, and give a recap of significant art sales of the past year.

New Website!

I’ve been dabbling in html coding from the beginning, since the mid-90s. My fine art website has existed in some form or another for at least 20 years. I’ve used various means to build it, from writing the code myself to using various WYSIWYG page builders (R.I.P. Adobe Muse). The wysiwygs are mostly dead and the coding has just gotten too complicated to keep up with.

So I’ve found a worthwhile use for AI.

I’m not a fan of so-called “Artificial Intelligence”. I could wax philosophical for some time on the various non-salutary effects this is already having on the human species. But I won’t. I will merely state that I highly dislike its use in creative activities. Heck, I can hardly stomach non-AI computer art. To each their own, I suppose.

But writing html code: this is a good use for AI. It is instantly verifiable (it works or it doesn’t) and strictly limited in scope.

So, for my new website front-end (the index page), I asked Claude AI to generate the code to my specifications, then I took this code and edited it in Adobe Dreamweaver (a miserable app, which, thanks to AI, probably won’t be around much longer). I especially needed help creating a slide show that was also responsive to display sizes from phone to desktop.

I’ve also set this up so that I can easily swap out the images in the slide show without any code changes.

I’m pleased with the results, and take full responsibility for any design shortcomings (yes, the link to the rest of the site is “below the fold”, but I’m fine with it. If someone can’t spend the extra seconds to explore the page, then I don’t really care of they go any further).

The website home page can be accessed here.

One last parting philosophical shot: remember, there is no such thing as “technological progress” — only “technological change.” Discuss.

Recent sales!

It’s been a banner year for oil painting sales. I’ve announced these on Instagram as they’ve happened, but I thought it best to give you a recap here, and remind everyone of works still available. Sales of these oil paintings clears up space in my studio and provides funds to make more art.

So below are photos of these recent sales: