Friday, August 20, 2010
“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The artist’s conundrum…it was a cold wet spring where I live in the Pacific northwest. Drab, grey, but in my backyard is a hydrangea bush. It was completely covered in buds, more than I have ever seen on it, just beginning to burst into wonderful color in an otherwise color deprived environment. For a couple of weeks, each time i walked by it or looked out my window into the backyard, I was quietly taken by it, and yet I hesitated to take a shot of it. I mean, how do you do a hydrangea creatively? Make a fresh statement? One major problem, of course, is that’s is just so darn common, everyones has seen one, has one in their yard, and has seen a dozen paintings and photographs of one. It’s like trying to be creative with a dandelion, and yet… its beauty kept calling to me. If I were to…. should it be of the whole bush? How do I edit out the deck rail, house, etc.? Should it be up close and intimate, if so will I be able to capture its subtle essence? I mean.. the calling of an artist is to share his experiences with the world at large, but how do I capture this experience, so subtle in its nature?
Well, the funny thing is, now that I have my image, I can look back and write all this stuff about it, but I swear to you, during the actual process, I never thought of any of that once! It was all seeing and intuition, until finally, almost in a dream, I just pulled out my camera and shot a few images. I didn’t even touch them for a month or more, sure I wouldn’t be able to do much with them, then one day, I opened them up and went to work. My colorful spring companion, once again, revealed its beauty to me.
Enjoy,
Tom
