Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Tag: creativity

  • Real Reality

    Real Reality

    As I write this in November 2022, Meta (Facebook) has just laid off about 11,000 employees. I feel sorry for the people, but it got me thinking about virtual reality vs “real reality” I don’t know about you, but I greatly prefer real reality.

    Virtual reality

    Have you noticed that many of the largest tech companies (Meta, Microsoft, Google, etc) want to move us to a world where we experience life through virtual reality goggles. We would sit in our chair and “experience” any place or time, we can do things that would be illegal or impossible in the real world. And generally is seems to be perfectly safe.

    In the virtual world we don’t have to worry much about the consequences of our actions. Game over. Restart. We don’t die or go to jail. What’s not to like?

    Real life

    Contrast that with the real world. Things take time and money and most of us have to work to earn a living. We are “stuck” in the era we are born in. Our society has lots of laws and restrictions we have to live with. We get hot and cold and wet. We get sick and break bones. People can be cruel. Marriages break up. We die.

    Wow, the virtual world sounds pretty good, doesn’t it. 🙂

    It’s about the experience

    To me, one of the differences is a safe, manufactured, managed experience vs what life brings us and what we can find in the world. The real world is real. The virtual world is fake. Even when the technology gets to the point where the virtual world looks real (it’s a long way from it now), it is still fake.

    Deep down inside, you know fake experiences are fake. Unless you live your life with only fake experiences.

    Let me chance making you upset with me. I don’t have much use for Disney World or other similar entertainment vendors. It may be fun to take the kids or grand kids there, if they’re under about 8, just to watch their excitement as they are entertained. But otherwise, I can’t escape the knowledge that it is all fake. It is all a manufactured experience made by a large corporation. That leaves me completely unsatisfied. Except for a good roller coaster. 🙂

    When you know the pirates on the river cruise aren’t able to attack you, it looses any terror. When you figure out the rocket ship you’re flying isn’t going to crash no matter how badly you “fly” it, there is little incentive. Even that good roller coaster that thrills for a couple of minutes, in reality, has no lasting hold for us. It will not fly off the track or crash into something or drown you when it seems to plunge into the lake. Shallow experiences. It is just shaking us around in a safe and controlled way.

    Being there

    This quote captures an essence of the notion of “being there” in real life:

    When I am out, I am there to be in the countryside, to have an experience; to notice, to engage, and perhaps record some good data with my camera. I am not thinking about making images, otherwise, I risk missing the experience altogether, and that seems counter intuitive. The experience comes first.

    Alister Benn, “Luminosity & Contrast”

    It’s not a game. No one is directing it or controlling it. No ads are being served up to us. It is the wild, unpredictable, real world. I agree with Alister’s description of the experience being key. The experience triggers our interests and creativity. We may not even know why we are drawn to an image at the time. We will figure it out later. Right then it is our subconscious speaking to us. But the experience has to be real to be meaningful.

    Safe?

    If there is no risk, there is no reward.

    When we are experiencing the actual world, we are not necessarily safe. If I am in the mountains taking pictures, I could get lost; I could make a misstep and break my leg; i could slip and fall off a cliff; a bear could attack me. Or if I am in the city shooting images, I am even more at risk.

    The fact that there is danger involved heightens the experience. People these days seem to believe that anything unsafe is bad and should be avoided. The reality is that life is unsafe. We don’t know what is going to happen 5 minutes from now.

    Putting our self in situations that can be uncomfortable or even a little dangerous can be good for us. We become more self reliant and able to think and handle situations. It gets the blood pumping and sharpens our senses. A little real danger is far more exciting than a lot of fake danger.

    To me, the dangers of being a couch potato and spending our lives anesthetized in entertainment outweigh the dangers of exposing ourselves to the real world. Entertainment is a dangerous drug.

    Don’t be stupid

    Oh, I can’t say that can I? It would imply that some people do not use good judgment. But as I talk about risk and experience, let me balance that with the counsel to do it realistically. You have to appraise the level of the risk and your capability. I’m not saying you should put yourself in danger.

    For instance, when I talk about going out in very cold conditions and snow, I dress appropriately. I have the equipment. And a good 4-wheel drive to get around. And a lot of experience. Getting a good picture is not worth killing myself.

    Don’t put yourself in any situation that you can’t handle or that is not worth the potential cost. Get training on identifying and countering the types of threats you could face. Most of all, be aware of yourself and what’s going on around you. Situational awareness applies even out in the woods. Be realistic and make sure you are physically and mentally capable of what you are doing.

    Live a real life

    My art involves outdoor photography. I do all of my shooting outside. As such, I have to get out in it. Weather almost doesn’t matter. Today, as I write this, it was 22F and snowing and with enough wind to make it pretty chilly. I was out walking nearly 5 miles in it. It was a nice day. The experience was more memorable than the images I got.

    It is not always pleasant. That is not my goal. Life isn’t always pleasant. Where I live we have temperatures from 110F to -20F. We can have winds over 60 mph. There is snow and blizzards and thunderstorms, even tornadoes and wildfires. Being out in those things makes you take a moment and say “Wow!”. It is real life.

    I feel real and alive and in the moment when I am out experiencing the world live. I am a player, not a spectator. Despite the limitations of my opportunities and capabilities, I want to experience life for myself. I am not content to let a corporation or a game developer or a movie maker package an experience for me, to feed me the same program they give to 1,000,000 other people.

    Look at the image with this article. Look closely in the top right. That woman is living a real life experience at the moment.

    Live life to make art

    Artists are often pictured as counter-culture, wild, living on the edge. To some extent, that is true. We don’t have to look different or dress different, but we should be different. Our art is about bringing experiences to people. As such, we have to experience things ourselves. That is a source of inspiration for us. Our passion from what we experience needs to be felt by our viewers.

    Do we have to suffer to make art? Is danger required? Of course not. Monet painted many of his great works in his back yard. The issue to me is are we actually living a life that fuels our creativity and vision? We have to have real experiences, not fake, packaged, safe entertainment.

    I don’t think I can generate passion for my viewers playing a flight simulation wearing a virtual reality helmet. It may be enjoyable, but it is a fake experience. I don’t want to show fake experience to my viewers. We don’t have to hang out over a cliff to live life. But get out. Be real. Live your own life, not something someone else packages and sells you. Take risks where necessary. Be yourself.

  • Apples or Oranges

    Apples or Oranges

    If you’ve taken a personality test, it probably showed you to be either rational or emotional. This may be true for most people, but you are an artist. This notion of your personality being a binary, either/or relationship probably presents a false dichotomy. It is based on built in assumptions that go back many years. People are not such a simple thing where you can label or classify them easily into rational or emotional, apples or oranges.

    Basis

    People have been trying to figure out human behavior, well, as long as there have been humans. There was a flurry of activity in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth century time period. Two prominent psychoanalysts of the time were Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud.

    I won’t attempt to go into their beliefs. It is too deep and depressing and actually not that useful. One outgrowth of Jung’s theories, though, that has become ingrained in our culture is a model of personality theory.

    Jung postulated that there are patterns of personality common to most people. Many personality tests have been developed. You may have taken one or more of them. They can seem very insightful, but in the same way a horoscope can seem to predict events or behavior. We tend to believe what we are told from an “authority”. I do not recommend you bother with any of the tests.

    Anyway, one part of Jung’s theories is that people’s personality tends to be rational or emotional.

    Only choice?

    What I observe is that people are complex creatures. A simple model can predict some behavior of large populations of people, but is too simple to say much about an individual. Each individual has innate tendencies, but they are also modified by past experience, beliefs, education, circumstances, age, and a host of other factors.

    And we have this annoying habit of jumping around all over the map at different times as far as our behavior seems to go. Let me use myself as an example. I have a rational mind trained by decades of engineering experience. I fit that mold well at the time. But I also have become intuitive and emotional. I follow my feelings and intuition first. Rational thought is generally used to analyze my intuitive decision and justify or reject it.

    Also, in another completely different dimension, I am very introverted. If we were together at a networking event there is a very good chance you wouldn’t know I was there, because I probably wouldn’t come talk to you. I’m too shy. Yet I have little trouble speaking in front of a large audience. I actually enjoy it and feel relaxed and welcome spontaneous discussion and questions. Weird. Complicated. Contradictory. But that is what people are.

    Artist viewpoint

    This is about artists, though. Let’s focus down on this strange group.

    I believe artists have to be both rational and emotional. At least if you are a photographer.

    Rationally, we have to know our tools and processes. We have to understand what we can and can’t do and how to use the technology to accomplish what we want. Using the equipment, both camera and computer, need to be second nature. No matter the actual complexity. As effortless as a painter using a brush.

    The rational mind also gives us purpose and continuity. We decide where we are going, what our goals are, and how to market our self. Without a conscious focus on these things, we will drift. Our rational side helps us work out composition, framing, exposure considerations, and lighting.

    But on the “soft” side, we have to understand our feelings and intentions. Why are we doing what we do? What experience are we trying to bring to our viewer? If we do not have strong feelings for our work how can we expect our viewers to? For most work, if we are not conveying strong emotions, it will fall flat.

    Those of us who are naturally rational may have trouble with this. But it is possible to bend, to learn, to open up. We have to.

    It’s a balance

    The trick for artists is that we have to balance these two sides. Most non-artists can get away with not having to do that as much. Think of your stereotype of an accountant. Cold, objective, numbers person? Unemotional?

    An artist needs balance. The rational side will decide what we are trying to do and what path we will follow to get there. It keeps us focused. Yet if we are totally rational our work will be static and dry. Precisely composed and technically perfect, but empty.

    Our feelings will bring us passion and emotion, love of the image. Our viewers will sense this. They want to feel what we were feeling when we created it. But if we live totally in our feelings we will drift. We will follow every whim that tweaks our interest at the moment. We could even become one of those self-indulgent stereotyped artists whose personal life is a mess, who can’t keep focus on any goals and neglect their family and friends and even personal care.

    Talking about that tendency to go too deep into the emotional side, Sean Tucker said:

    Our rational minds are the foil that serves to balance those tendencies. They allow us to go deep but stay tethered to something truer and more stable than our shifting moods. They allow us to make our way far into the maze, knowing that we still have a thread to follow back into the light when we are done.

    Sean Tucker, The Meaning in the Making

    I love this image of the rational mind providing a safe path back when we have run off too deep into the wilderness of our feelings. We need to explore this maze, but we need to be able to get out, too.

    Don’t be put in a box

    Never allow yourself to be defined into a box by other people. Always surprise them, and yourself. Do the unexpected. If someone labels you as something, understand that that is just their opinion. It does not make you into anything. Other people’s expectations should not define us. You do not have to be either an apple or an orange.

    Likewise, do not put yourself into a box. It limits your thinking. It artificially places bounds on what you can and can’t do. What thoughts you will allow yourself to even think. How much freedom you have to experiment.

    Always do new things and try new ideas. This self-limitation is an even more serious problem, because we do not think there is anything we can do about it. Be aware of it and fight it.

    When we feel trapped in one of these boxes, rather than accepting it we should ask “who put the box there” and “so what?” That is someone else’s box. If someone comes up to you on the street and draws a chalk box around you on the sidewalk and tells you you are in this box, just step out of it and keep going. Let them have their box. You don’t have to be in it.

    Balance

    I believe, as artists, we have to be both rational and emotional. I’m not trying to give a new personality theory. Are we exhibiting both conflicting traits at the same time or are we bouncing back and forth between them? Don’t know and don’t care. The results are all that matter to me.

    It doesn’t have to be either apples or oranges. That is letting someone else define the problem. We are walking a tightrope. If we get overbalanced too far one way or the other, we will fall off into the pit. We won’t like that and won’t be doing much satisfying art there. But we have to walk the tightrope. It is part of the artist calling.

    Today’s image

    The image above represents this tightrope. I took a brief time to get a reasonable composition, proper exposure, depth of field, balance of forms, etc. That was mostly instinctual. But mostly, I hope you get how I feel about the guy. And I hope it makes you feel something, too, and think about him. I have my story, influenced by the range of sights and emotions at the time. I’ll let you tell your own.

  • Consistency

    Consistency

    Consistency is good, right? Unless it’s not. There is a time and place for everything, including breaking expectations. Consistency should not be our main goal. What we are led to see and create is more important.

    Hobgoblin

    A quote we all know that is attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson usually says: Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. That seems odd. Why would he disparage consistency?

    The reality is that this has been misquoted for so long that most people have forgotten the real statement. The quote, from his essay “Self Reliance“, actually is: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Let’s explore that.

    But first, what is a “hobgoblin”? Even though I have heard this quote forever and acted like I understood it, I didn’t know what a hobgoblin was. Wikipedia says: A hobgoblin is a household spirit, typically appearing in folklore, … Like other fae folk, hobgoblins are easily annoyed. They can be mischievous, frightening, and even dangerous.

    So if we accept the concept, a hobgoblin is not a scary monster but something we tend to live with and accept that is kind of annoying, maybe occasionally dangerous. Playing that out, it makes it a spirit or tendency that can be dangerous or difficult to control. Something that can occasionally do more harm than good.

    Consistency is good

    We usually consider consistency a sign of intelligence, of good work habits, of reliability. You are respected when people know you can be relied on to keep your commitments. It is a sign of maturity.

    As adults this should be a quality we cultivate in much of our life. It makes us more predictable and helps us get along well in life. People around us need to know we are not schizophrenic. When they come to us for something, they need to know who they are dealing with, how we will behave.

    So what’s not to like?

    Consistency is bad

    But Emerson is saying that a certain type of consistency can be bad. Is that contradictory? One of the traits of an adult is the ability to keep contradictory concepts in our head and rationalize them. F. Scott Fitzgerald said: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.“

    What is this, then, that Emerson calls “foolish” consistency? I believe he is referring to being a slave to consistency, even when it would make more sense to change. He says it is a trait of little minds – ouch.

    We all have ideas and opinions and habits we have developed over time. Key is: they have developed over time. This means they change with time. Do not be afraid to seem inconsistent with your past beliefs when you change and adopt new beliefs.

    As artists, we develop a style that is a signature of us. People recognize our work without being told. But is the style who and what we are, or is it merely a reflection of where we are right now? Don’t be trapped by your own success. We become reluctant to change it for fear of breaking our “brand”.

    We grow and change. Sometimes radically. Do you ever feel trapped by a style you no longer believe in? This may be what Emerson refers to as foolish consistency.

    As a couple of examples, I respect Joel Grimes for making a couple of right angle turns in his career. He became very successful for a certain look he brought to his work, mostly advertising. But he came to a point where he “used it up” and changed. He continued being successful.

    Another one that comes to mind is Cole Thompson. Cole is a great black & white photographer who lives near me in Colorado. He has usually done long exposure landscapes. But his new series Negative Intersections is a big departure from his old style. I respect him for taking the risk and breaking out of the rut..

    Go where the spirit leads you

    Artists should stay fresh, alive, seeking, learning. When we do this, we change. We grow and evolve. Practically, this means we will change our style at one or more points in our career. Isn’t your vision different now than 5 years ago?

    Let your feelings and instinct lead you in this journey as you develop as an artist. Consistency is good until it starts to limit you. Be willing to change, even if it means you now seem to be inconsistent with what you did before. You are not really inconsistent, because where you are now is authentically you.

    Change or you are trapped in a box of your own making. Set yourself free. Trust that you are growing to better levels all the time.

  • Am I Creative?

    Am I Creative?

    Am I creative? I wonder this a lot. Especially when I look at a lot of other people’s art. Surprisingly, it is not that I think the other work is better, it is that I look at most of it and think: that’s not very creative. I must not understand.

    Is everyone else creative except me?

    When you seem to be going in a different direction from everybody else, you have to think either they’re wrong or I’m wrong. It is hard to tell, because there are no anchors, no fixed points of reference, no authority to judge. So in a sense, it seems to be entirely subjective.

    If there are no absolute standards, I guess I can’t look at other art and think it is not creative. It might be very creative, I just don’t see it. Or maybe I am jaded from making images too long. Maybe I am burnt out or I have set my standards too high.

    Been there, done that

    It is hard for me to look at art with the wonder and joy I want to. Too often my reaction is “been there, done that; seen it before, and better”.

    Is it true that everything has been done? That there are no more new images to make, no new songs, no new novels to write? I hope not. That would be very depressing. It seems like fresh, new, creative things happen. I’m just not seeing it too much in photography.

    What is creativity?

    It has been said that creativity is your capacity to make innovative connections and free associations that others don’t do the way you do. So apparently there is something unique about our particular makeup and viewpoint of the world. I see things different from everyone else. You do too. So, if we can execute on our ideas, we should be able to bring forth unique and creative things that other people would not do.

    But if I create something, does that make it creative? Most of us love to create. The joy and personal satisfaction of bringing something into being that would not have existed without us is extremely satisfying. Those of us who have learned that we can do this become addicted to it.

    I hear people equate the concepts, though. I create therefore I am creative. This seems to be at the heart of the issue for me. Creating vs. creative.

    Here is one of the places I get stuck. I see a lot of people go to extremes, to the bizarre or ridiculous just for the sake of being different. Is being different sufficient to be creative? By my standards, not every creation I see seems to me to be creative. I can relate to this somewhat satirical quote by Banksy: “Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.“

    On the other hand, even if it is not bizarre, much of what I see labeled as “creative” leaves me puzzled. I look at it and think “how can that be creative? I’ve seen images like that lots of times.”

    Buzz word

    Has “creative” become just a required buzz word that everybody uses? Like “story telling” It seems like today everybody is story telling with their art. No, most of what I see has no story. It is just art that may or may not invoke some feeling or imagery in you. It may just be a pretty picture.

    I guess “creative” has become like that. It would be an insult these days to say that someone’s art is not creative or not telling a story. Even when it is not.

    Does an image have to be truly original?

    It seems to me that there are 3 general classes of creativity: imitative, derivative, and unique. In my opinion, most art is in the first 2 categories. A few works are truly unique.

    In imitative art, we see something we like and file it away so we can do something kind of like it later. We may create a very pleasing image, but it has not added anything new to our understanding. Maybe your goal was only to create a nice image. That’s OK, but it will not take you to the level of great art. It is not creativity.

    In derivative art, something we have seen someone else do connects with some other ideas in our experience and inspires us to visualize something a little different. To me this is a valid type of creativity. We are building on other ideas and adding to the dialog. We have created fresh new art.

    Occasionally, rarely, we or someone come up with something that is a leap from the mainstream. Something that is unique, that truly did not exist before. But even that is kind of an overstatement. There are stepping stones that lead even the greats to where they end up. Andy Warhol couldn’t have gotten to where he went without Picasso, Duchamp, even DC Comics. It is just that some artists seem to leap further and get there ahead of the rest of us. And we envy them.

    But maybe I am arguing myself into the position that there is little wild, radical creativity. Most things progress in small steps.

    Maybe it just needs to be our own?

    With no scientific data, I am guessing that the majority of artists are imitative, and that most of the rest are derivative, as far as their creativity goes. A very few are truly, uniquely creative. Maybe that is good. If there were more creativity then the art world would be yanked in too many directions at the same time.

    Even the art world, that thinks it is always looking for something new, resists change. Every major trend, like impressionism, modernism, realism, etc, was resisted by the critics and the entrenched leaders of the current movement. People actually don’t like wild leaps.

    Maybe the best we can hope for is to look for derivative opportunities. Try to connect disparate ideas to synthesize something fresh and “creative”. Take risks, but not just for the sake of being different. This will help us rise above conventional ways of viewing things. It will let us contribute new ideas into the discussion and help people take their own steps to new ideas. Maybe the best view of creativity is that we make associations our own unique way to create things different from other people.

    This is probably the level of creativity most of us can achieve. Maybe that is all that is required.

    For me, I guess I will try to stop worrying about it so much. It shouldn’t matter to me whether or not I think other people’s work is creative. I will focus on making my own work creative in my estimation. I’m the one who has to be satisfied with my work.

  • Secret Revealed: The Meaning of Art

    Secret Revealed: The Meaning of Art

    I may be expelled from the artist guild for revealing a closely guarded secret. I want to talk about the meaning of art. Maybe it is not actually a secret. Maybe I just don’t understand.

    Objective meaning

    Without getting pedantic, we have to talk a little about meaning. This is a deep study in itself that we can only shine a little light on here.

    Something has objective meaning if it creates the same idea in your head that it does in mine. A stop sign has meaning for most of us, but only because of training and convention. A user manual describing a feature of a product has meaning – or it should; many are poorly written.

    The famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung said:

    “No individual symbolic image can be said to have a dogmatically fixed generalized meaning.”

    I think he was saying that we all see something different when we look at an image.

    Pictures consist of marks on a 2D surface, such as canvas. We see the marks as lines, shapes, forms, and colors. How we perceive these marks determine the meaning we get from it. Two people viewing the same image: one dismisses it as uninteresting, the other breaks down in tears because it invoked a deep symbolism or meaning or memory for them.

    Some things, like documentary photography or photo journalism, seem to have meaning. They at least motivate a certain response fairly consistently. Even so, the meaning is often not exactly what the creators meant, because everyone is in a different place. So I have to wonder if the work truly has meaning. Another question is whether it is really art. If the focus is meaning, is that at odds with art? Just asking.

    Feeling/emotion

    I spent most of my career as an engineer. Talking about and dealing with feelings is pretty alien to me. But I have discovered that art is all about feelings. I would go so far as to say that if art doesn’t invoke an emotional response in the viewer, it is probably a failure.

    For decades I took technically good, well composed pictures of the natural world. Mostly landscapes. When I look back at them now I see most of them as completely boring. There was little discernible emotion there. I just showed what it was, I did not attempt to give a glimpse of how I felt about it. I was making documentary images, not art. Today, in the same situation, I would strive to bring you my interpretation of the scene, with my feelings prominent. Or if I can’t figure out how to do that, I might take an image for a record of it, but I would never show it to you.

    The left brain/right brain model is useful for describing the logical vs. creative sides of our nature. I don’t want to imply that I have or believe we should switch totally to the right brain creativity. Life works best in balance. We have both natures for a reason. I strive to develop my creative side to an equal level with the logical, analytic side I have emphasized most of my life. But at times I also just let my right brain side run free to see what it creates.

    Where does meaning come from?

    Artists react to and bring out things we may not consciously be aware of. Creativity is a strange and murky process.

    John McGlade, an artist and free thinker from Australia, expressed it very well in a Quora answer to a question: Does art have a meaning that only the artist knows? Please pardon the long quote, but this is good stuff.

    NO! A piece of visual art may have meaning for the artist who made it or not. If you mean meaning statable in words then artists and the public may have no clue, of an artworks meaning. The visual arts are done precisely because words are insufficient to hold the concepts alluded to in the visual arts like painting, sculpture, photography, plays and film. The artist may say or discover or may have no idea of the meaning in their work just by doing it. (Some artists, contrary to popular belief, may have no idea of why they do their work or what it means, nor do they care!) But the moment other minds see the work, because of their individual and unique thinking and perceptual patterns, they will bring their own impression of what the work may mean to them. As an artist, at every stage of my creativity, I will try to put into some words that hunt around what my work may be about. That’s the exciting thing about doing art, I am groping around in the darkness of my mind and it’s ideas, to discover what my mind is trying to tell me. It’s the same for the public, the artist is highlighting some aspect of their experience, but there’s no guarantee that other people will see it the same way as the artist. Meaning, for our complex human minds, is more than just words, it’s a whole conglomeration of words, images, feelings, impressions, prejudices and perceptual biases into one gigantic scrambled omelette of being; and every omelette is unique. Artists may not be as smart as you or they think they are. They are just highlighting what they have noticed and we are free to take our perception on what they present.

    Do I know what it means?

    Like Mr. McGlade highlights, in the art I am currently doing I often have no idea when I am working on a piece where I am going with it or what it means. I just follow my feelings at the time and see where it leads. Even when I get done I may not know what it “means”.

    After I set it aside for a while and think about it I might be able to figure out why it moves me. Maybe even what it seems to be about. Sometimes I can state a meaning – for me.

    I have said before that for art, I am not much of a planner. I react and trust my intuition. So I often do not have a crisp understanding of what I have created.

    Why?

    But maybe that is not enough. Maybe I owe it to myself and my audience to ask “why”. If I am caught up in a creative mood and making something I really don’t understand, I wouldn’t interrupt the process. But maybe later.

    If a gallery requires an artist statement describing a work, I confess that I sometimes have to make up something. Because I honestly may not have words to describe what I meant. Sometimes, though, being forced to write it makes me examine myself and my work . It can be a good exercise to try to express our feelings and intent. Our meaning for a work may emerge over time. It is sometimes hard to force ourselves to go through the introspection required to dig it out.

    Questions?

    Perhaps one of the purposes of art is to make us ask questions. Could that be the meaning of some art? Maybe we should not look at an image and quickly say “I don’t like it”. A better response may be to ask our self why we feel like we do on viewing it.

    Great art, art that stays with us, leaves us feeling like we are on the brink of discovery. That if we keep pushing and examining ourselves we might reveal a great truth. It could be that the unanswered questions are one of the reasons for art. I like William Neill’s quote:

    “I would rather make an image that asks a question than one that answers one.”

    Make art

    We have enough people going around wringing their hands, promoting their own causes, and painting the world as bleak and depressing and hopeless. I believe art should generally be a positive force in the world. Art to bring us joy, to encourage us to reflect and be mindful, even to aspire to greater things.

    That is the direction I will take with my art. You can accuse me of having blinders on, of having my head in the sand. Maybe. But it is easy to point out suffering and ugliness. It is harder to bring joy and encouragement. That is my goal. So I would say my art has meaning, but it may only make sense to me. That is OK. I hope it has some meaning to you, but it will be a different meaning, because you are a different person with different values and experiences. If I can raise some interesting questions I will have achieved something.

    I apologize to the galleries that require artist statements full of deep thoughts and meaning behind my images: sometimes I just make something up. There is a meaning to me, but it might not seem significant to state it. It might not even be possible right now. But I will keep thinking. Some emotional or intuitive things can be destroyed by trying to precisely describe them.

    I like what E. B. White said about analyzing humor. Paraphrasing it:

    “Analyzing art is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.“

    Art is a conduit for feelings and emotions and understanding that cannot actually be expressed in words. So, does art have meaning? It is meaningful. It is powerful. Art moves us in different ways. Art can even change our lives. But it may mean one thing to me and something completely different to you. Perhaps it is better to say art creates meaning.