Most Popular Escape Into Life Artists – The Top 50

Through an indirect rating system, Escape into Life visitors “vote” every time they visit a page on our website. Google analytics allows us to see how many visitors each page receives for the last thirty days. The traffic comes from social media sites; Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook, but above all from Stumble Upon. In the past, Chris simply put the top ten to fifteen most popular artists in order according to traffic, in June he had put every single artist of the top 50, and this is an update of that post. There are daily changes to the order and this is a very recent picture with the page view numbers referring only to the period between 5th August and September 4th. In other words, unlike the figures from Stumble, they are not running totals but a snapshot of activity over a 4 week period.

The top sixteen of our most most popular posts all received over 1,000 page views in this period while the top three artists received over 10,000. Chris had added the top navigation bar quite recently, a feature on the site to allow visitors to explore the entire archive which consists of well over 1000 artists by now. Please make use of this feature – which has had 1, 117 hits on Stumble – and also of the Shuffle Post option at then end of each post to discover, enjoy and share great artists you may have overlooked before.

1. John Kenn 18, 248 page views for the Artist Watch post while the Works by John Kenn has had 5,745 page views. The second of these, the Showcase post for John Kenn has generated 28 comments, the original post 115 comments at the last count. Well worth checking out, maybe you want to add your voice too?

2. In second place Celebrating the Art of the Doodle 14,786 views in last thirty one days, and on StumbleUpon this has had 217,ooo hits to date. The 20 Awesome Doodles remain much visited and have elicited 57 comments – some praise and some argument as to what is or isn’t a doodle! If you are a doodler yourself – or if you draw or sketch – you may want to contribute to our Moleskine project.

3. Julie Heffernan 8, 680 views and holding on to third place. Because she was hugely popular from the start, Chris added this Julie Heffernan Showcase. The Stumble views of this post to date are 212,000.

4. Kipling West – 5, 188 page views and rising all the time. Seems many people have recently discovered this Artist who was featured here earlier this year in late January. Makes us happy to know that people are browsing through the Archives. 144,000 hits to date on Stumble.

5. Christopher Holloran – 4,913 page views – His unusual, distinctive drawings and collage works have received 87 Facebook Likes and 61, 000 views to date via Stumble Upon.

6. Rene Rickabaugh – 3, 264 views. Slow to gain popularity initially but doing very well now.

7 . Mitch Dobowner – 3, 181 our top photographer, we love these moody storm sky and cloud photos.

8. Jon Mac Nair – 2, 636 page views – This artist and his odd and dramatic drawings continue to shine on these lists. First posted in November 2009, he has stayed consistently popular.

9. Duy Huynh 2, 195 page views. Huynh’s poetic paintings rise to one of the top spots, it looks like many of you love this one. Our Stumble visitors like this work too, to date there have been 15,000 page views there. The recent showcase post Duy Huynh: A Magical Realist between East and West has done even better on Google Analytics with 2, 249 views.

1o. Rafal Olbinski – 2, 171 page views on Google Analytics and 40, 000 views on Stumble, up considerably from his previous 16th place. What a wonderful, magical, lyrical dream world he creates!

11. Michael Quigg – 1, 867 page views of his haunting photos of urban deacy and abandon.

12 . Kevin Sloan – 1, 550 page views. He has shot up from his previous 47th place. More magical realism in his paintings of animals and birds, flowers and fruit.

13 . David Kramer – 1, 323 Ruefully ironic commentary on the gap between a desired life of glamour and humdrum everyday reality.

14. Chelsea Greene Lewyta – 1, 321 views – a sudden resurge of interest in the works of this artist and ilustrator, first posted in October 2009, brings her into the over 100o hits category.

15. Shane McAdams 1, 191- A new entry for these unusual mixed media, often using ball point “landscape” drawings – and we are happy that you seem to be using the Browse function to make new discoveries!

21. Nat Urazmetova – 1,051 A recently posted photographer who is going down very well and receiving lots of visits.

17. Colin Johnson – 914 page views. His colour filled, intricately detailed illustrations are popular with our visitors.

18. Oliver Hibert – 888 page views, and more trippy colour. Our Stumble visitors love him he’s had 22,000 views to date there.

19. Harry Benson – 750 page views for the celebrity photographs by this internationally renowned photographer.

20. Rodney Smith – 682 view. In Chris’s own words ” Smith was one of the earliest explosions of traffic on Escape into Life. Way back in January 2010! (We’ve only been around for about a year.) Rodney Smith’s images are delightful. He continues to stay relatively popular.”

For the artists below, just an image, a link and the viewing figures.