The 50 Most Popular Artists on Escape into Life
1. John Kenn 219, 920 page views in the last twenty-nine days
The most popular artist on Escape into Life. The link I’ve provided above takes you to a showcase we made for Kenn because of the phenomenon his artwork has created on this site. There are currently 88 comments on the original post, involving arguments about the originality of Kenn’s work, namecalling, and effusive declarations of love.
Through an indirect rating system, Escape into Life visitors “vote” every time they visit a page on our website. Google analytics allows me to see how many visitors each Artist Watch page receives for the last thirty days. The traffic comes from social media sites; Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook, but mostly from StumbleUpon.
In the past, I simply put the top ten to fifteen most popular artists in order according to traffic but now I’m putting every single artist of the top 50 in order. The top twenty-five most popular artists have all received over 1,000 page views in the last thirty days; the top five most popular artists have received over 5,000.
We recently added a feature on the site which allows visitors to explore the entire archive (over 1000 artists). I’m curious to see how this will impact traffic. My guess is that the artists who had been overlooked before will now be more readily discovered. The goal is to make browsing as simple as possible so that every artist has a chance to be discovered and shared.
2. Julie Heffernan 65, 308 page views in the last thirty days. For a long time, I thought Heffernan would hold the highest position. She was immediately popular and rose to over 200, 000 views last month.
3. Rene Rickabaugh 14, 883 page views. Rickabaugh took a couple weeks to gain traction; now he seems to hold a strong position.
3. Oliver Dicicco and Barry Underwood 14, 612 page views. This dynamic duo has been consistently popular since their work was published last month.
4. Mitch Dobrowner 11, 041 page views. Dobrowner reached into the 20,000 range up until about a week ago.
4. David Kramer 7, 681 page views. Just recently appearing toward the top of the chart. I think it’s great that a work with so much humor and irony can be incredibly popular.
5. Hans Strand 6, 802 page views. A recent favorite of EIL visitors. These are beautiful photographs.
6. Darren Reallyloud 4, 506 page views. Reallygood has been re-discovered. The post went unnoticed when it was first published. I think it may have something to do with the new browse feature.
7. Michael Quigg 3, 512 page views. Quigg has reached into the 12,000 range. These photos of urban decay are simply mesmerizing.
8. Kipling West 2, 634 page views. West is a veteran heavy weight champion of Escape into Life with over 300, 000 views since January of 2010. Kipling discovered all the traffic coming to her Flickr from Escape into Life and left a comment to our readers. We love it when artists do that.
9. Takahiro Kimura 2, 605 page views. These portraits are a big favorite. I see Kimura’s work being shared on Twitter.
10. Christopher Holloran 2, 452 page views. Holloran rose to about 25, 000 and held near the top of the chart for several months, which is unusual for mixed media and collage. But Holloran’s art is truly original. It definitely stands out.
11. John MacNair 2, 278 page views. MacNair has been consistently popular since November of 2010. These drawings are strange and utterly delightful.
12. Harry Benson 1, 768 page views. Sometimes we’ll post a classic photographer or artist, meaning of the last 50 or 100 years. These iconic photos definitely resonate with a lot of people.
13. Bekah Richards 1, 475 page views. I use Flickr a lot to search for artists to feature in Escape into Life. I believe that most of the world’s great undiscovered art is on Flickr. Richards was an artist I discovered one day. Her photo-manipulations are arresting in their beauty.
14. Jim Barsness 1, 458 page views. I’m always happy to see artists like Barsness become popular on Escape into Life. It shows our visitors have discerning tastes.
15. Alfred Gescheidt 1, 393 page views. This is an interesting set of photos by a man who did experiments with photo-manipulation before the age of Photoshop. What is amazing is how clean the manipulations are, and how convincing, even though they are humorous pieces.
16. Rafal Olbinski 1, 298 page views. Olbinski held the top of the chart for several months. Surrealism is usually very popular on Escape into Life. The influence of Margritte is fairly obvious in Oblinski, which several commenters point out.
17. Rodney Smith 1, 203 page views. 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. I believe he received around 60, 000 views in a single month. He continues to stay relatively popular.
18. Michael Gelinas 1, 180 page views. I was pleased to see these double-exposures get noticed. I find this work extraordinary.
19. Mike Davis 1, 162 page views. I just discovered Mike Davis’s traffic as I was making this post tonight. I’m not sure how long he’s been popular.
20. Alexander Korzer-Robinson 1, 079 page views. Exquisite cut book art, extremely popular up until a couple weeks ago, reaching around 8, 000 views.
21. Frans Masereel 1, 050 page views. It was nice to see these beautiful woodcuts by Masereel become popular.
22. Dirk Dzimirsky 1, 034 views. These photorealistic works were hugely popular when we first published them. Dzimirsky’s page on EIL has probably been viewed close to 120, 000 times. Photorealistic works are usually popular, especially when rendered with an expert’s hand.
23. Lockwood Dennis 1, 033 page views. Another beautiful woodcut set that caught the public interest. This makes me think we have some design-minded folk who visit the site.
24. Bert Monroy Under 1000 page views the numbers can change quite a bit and many do not stay in the same position for very long. So I’ll end my commentary here.
25. Han Sungpil
26. Akira Beard
27. David Salle
28. Jeremy Price
29. Anthony Gormley
30. Ray Caesar
31. Carolina Souss
32. Neil Krug
34. Frank Caico
35. Yumiko Kayukawa
36. Kris Kuksi
37. Richard Estes
38. Angelica Paez
39. Kris Lewis
40. Rui Palha
41. Lissy Laricchia
43. Sverrir Thor
44. Sam Morrison
45. Lu Cong
46. Samantha Huang
47. Kevin Sloan
48. Paul Cava
49. Paul Jackson
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Wow. Some great art here