Saturday, September 24, 2011

Creative Destruction

Where's the on button for this thing?

When I talk about old media, I mean really old media.  I was an exhibiting artist, mostly paintings and prints, for years.  Life, making a living and the cost of real estate seemed to be the main causes for the end of that period of my life.  I do miss the physicality of painting and taking the time for the introspection necessary to condense a lot of experience into one static physical object.  It can be a profound and, at times, exhilarating process.

As long as the roots are not severed, all is well.

Recently, I have been trying to streamline my life, pruning if you will.   Part of that process was going through all of my (much too much) artwork in storage.  Some of it I kept, some I gave away and the rest went to the dump.  It's interesting to compare the reaction between my non-artist and artist friends.  The non-artist friends were mostly horrified and thought that it must have been some horribly traumatic event for me.   The artists all, to a person, understood that analyzing and selectively pruning your past is a powerful and important aspect to being a creative person and moving ahead.  There were a few rough moments but overall, it felt really good.

How about that quality of light?

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