Newbie on Email Marketing, trying to find best way to introduce contacts

Hello All,

I am venturing into the world of social media and setting up a website for my paintings. I have a long list of contacts I have developed while doing my day job as an architect. My question is, I want to create a blast to let people know my gallery website is set up and there is a newsletter. I am trying out mail chimp but I am wondering what is the best way to do this?

I thought about creating a personal email that I send to each person letting them know the news of me being a painter and opening up a website gallery. Obviously that takes time but it would be more likely they were to open it up...maybe? Or I could continue to import all of my contacts into mail chimp and create something, I am not sure what, to send to these contacts to let them know the same thing. However, would that be more likely to get spammed and unopened? I feel like I get one shot at this so I am trying to figure out the best way to do it. I was going to do the single approval versus double approval but then I am told there is more likelihood that my domain gets blacklisted for spam.

Any help would be appreciated.