I’m not usually so thrilled over the all the great free Wordpress themes out there.

They almost all require hacking up to do what I want them to do and to match options and capabilities with clients’ specifc needs and requests.

So given that I’m my own most critical client, I’m writing again today about this theme and the nice results it gives for my three portfolios I’m in the process of reassembling on this site. I’ve now posted seven entries/pictures on each of the three– a mural gallery, a selection of faux painting and custom textured, embedded and polished plaster finishes, and a portfolio of custom art projects, which includes scenic painting, chalk painting, public art and custom/commissioned paintings.

Here’s a screenshot of the navigation page for the custom art gallery, only the actual page is twice as big- I did hardly any customizing to make this blog perfect for me. It has a big beautiful pictures-first look on the single post/picture pages that I love, too.

Custom art portfolio screenshot

Moving from San Diego to Pittsburgh has left the usual upheaval in the details, and I’ve spent my six weeks in PGH (since finishing the vertical blinds mural in SD) working to un-overturn the cart, if you will: finding new business, new space in which to work, finding old stuff I need right now (“what f$%^ing box is that in?”), etc.

One of the repeating moments here that have given me a crispy new angle on things is presenting my work (meaning, mural painting, faux painting and my custom art portfolio) to people who have never heard of me before, and also to people who don’t use the web in the same way that Southern Californians (for the most part) do.

One of the crispiest edges that started screaming suddenly for my attention was the photo gallery I’ve been using since switching to WordPress– I hated it all of a sudden, and dreaded the thought of loading it with more pictures in organized fashion just to hate the output (small size, too difficult to hack their code and customize, irritating navigation, etc).

I have tons of pictures from the last 15 years of making art of all kinds professionally, and never liked the presentation of my chosen few, let alone all of the process b-sides which make for interesting research and reference materials.

I’ve used a few different photo galleries over the years (yes I have a Flickr account, but not so fond of its limitations for my work stuff), even had one made custom without really ever resolving the issue and became acutely aware of this here when directing people to the website and not getting the exact response I was looking for….

so over Thanksgiving weekend I found a solution that gives me what I want visually in the AutoFocus Theme for WordPress. It allows me to make better use of WordPress’ online marketing capabilities and make way better use of the hundreds of thousand of unusual pictures I have from my various wall mural, faux painting and custom art projects dating back to 1995.

immediately put into action in three new photo galleries, these new pages will be both more comprehensive and more specific at the same time while always growing with new, never before seen full resolution pictures from my archives (searchable, too)

so check out the simplified navigation bar in the header up above, and the even more simplified photo galleries of my wall mural, faux painting and custom art portfolio.