In search of the Golden Section

One good thing about Instagram is the age mix - well, two good things really. You are not supposed to drone on too much about whatever picture you put up and people can take it or leave it.

Yesterday I typed in the name of a young (40+ - that's young) friend who I know sells many of his paintings there, and found him at the first try. I sent him the sort of message we have been sending each other by text for years now, and he responded in a similar way. Basically, we have been trying to get each other to admit to being gay and have done since we first met about 25 years ago. Childish, I know, but it amuses us.

I began following him immediately and was delighted when his latest post appeared on my phone. His posts are all his paintings - which I like - and this one is the latest. Someone had actually commented on the pink of the waiter's jacket and he responded by saying that the pink was HIS secret. I left a comment about his pink not being a secret in my household. Once again, we laughed.

I began using Instagram on the advice of Step Daughter. 'People make a lot of money by it', she said, Jonathan sells most of his paintings there.' Jonathan painted the above. She said that doing Instagram properly was quite hard, time consuming work, but she has never tried blogging. It is a doddle compared to writing this.

I decided to set up an account for H.I. but fell at the first hurdle. Her paintings are always proportioned to approximately Golden Section, but Instagram has its own cropping procedure which you cannot circumnavigate. You follow the instructions to post up a picture and when it comes to the cropping option 'original' it chops off the top and bottom. This means - until I can find a way of fixing the problem - that all of her paintings would be detail only, and that is no use to anyone. As far as I can tell, Instagram is designed to optimise photographs of girls legs on beaches with the sea showing between their knees.

I went back to Jonathan's site just to look at his stats and to my utter incredulity saw that he has 25,000 followers. 25K! I have about a hundred, which I thought was not bad considering I have only been there for a month or two.

I sent him a message (privately) asking if they were all gay and he replied that a good proportion of them probably were. The next question I am going to ask him is how you go about having that many followers. Even if only one buys a painting every now and then, that is your living sorted out. I have already made a sale through Instagram (the Cotham Marble) so I am quite hopeful about the future in one way. Soon I will be too old for this stone lark. I am already.