The whole story doesn't show --

Farm History

The [artist/]writer is either a practicing recluse or a delinquent,
guilt-ridden one; or both. Usually both.
Susan Sontag

My respite is over. It's been too long, and I miss communicating with my fellow bloggers. But I just had to get through these last weeks. There is something about this time of year that just drags one down. Creative energies were at a low ebb, and all I could cope with initially was painting my living room.

But then I turned to the camera.

Why? I've given this great thought (or almost great) and conclude that, for me, it was something I could control. I could sit for hours doing the processing, fidgeting, starting over, creating my own textures for overlays -- so you see, the creative spark was still alive, just operating at a different level, a more controllable level unlike oil paints and watercolors that don't cooperate, that slide around and do what they want to do -- sort of like children or a herd of wild kittens!

I also like learning new things, new techniques and reading fairly boring how-to manuals. It takes my mind into that left side where I did not have to be creative, just thorough -- no, make that thorough and boring.

And I've learned so much, not only about the photography, but also about seeing, perceiving and composing. This was something I had always struggled with on canvas or paper, feeling clumsy and stumbling around in the dark.

Old Apple Farm

But with the camera and a viewfinder/grid I was suddenly composing vignettes and making images come alive. Now when I review my photographs, I can "see" them as paintings in my mind. The potential, the possibilities are there; I know now a bit more about how to tease the image out, to make it visible -- intellectually and emotionally -- how to translate and interpret.

Waiting Beneath

Also, I think the season allows for a different way of perceiving -- the excessiveness of colors and brightness we have in summer and fall are now gone. As Andrew Wyeth put it:

“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.”

. . . and so I hope that as time goes by my creative story will begin to emerge, a slow process of repousse, of pushing out from behind . . . or from beneath!