Kat Eye Studio

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Finding Your Artistic Vision

I had a thought-provoking conversation in the comments of last week’s Dealing with Disappointment post. Jack and I chatted on our capacity to deal with disappointment being correlated to our artistic vision. The gist of it: The stronger your personal vision, the less disappointments can effect you.

That rings true to me. The more I know why I create art and what I’m trying to achieve in my art, the less I care what other people think. Feedback from others is always colored by their personal values and opinions. If they have a different vision than mine for what art should look like, what it’s purpose is, then their feedback doesn’t need to be absorbed as truth. It can be registered and evaluated, then filed away if I decide it doesn’t apply to what I’m trying to do.

There is strength and clarity in having an artistic vision. It makes me sit up a bit taller, represent my art to others with confidence.

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I have to admit, I don’t think I’ve had a clear vision of what I want to achieve in my art until sometime this last year. Or maybe I had one before and it shifted this last year. Either way, it’s taken lots of journaling, discussions with others, writing here, and looking critically at my art to help me clarify what it is I want to achieve with my art; to know what it is I want to express and communicate to others. I knew I had a vision when I could finally write an Artist Statement that rang true.

I certainly don’t always achieve my vision with the art I create. But it’s nice to have a personal standard I’m working toward. A goal for each piece. The artistic process becomes an ongoing cycle of “create, then evaluate,” deciding after the fact whether or not something fits my vision. I don’t want to mess up the creative process by putting too many judgments and filters on it up front, but I’ve discovered the pieces that end up in the long-term “keep” file are the ones that best fit my vision. Every time.

So, do you have an artistic vision? Do you know why you create what you create, and for whom? How did you get there? This is a worthy topic to give some thought to.

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Unraveling an Identity

I’ve started thinking about identity. What is it? How does it work? Is my identity me?

I’ve come to a conclusion as I’ve pondered the idea of “identity”… My identity is not me. My identity is something external to me. It’s everything I’ve picked up to define myself along the way. The views through others eyes and the shortcuts I use to describe myself. Where I spend my time and energy. What I create. All that is wrapped up in my identity. But it is not me.

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I’ve come up with an analogy, explaining identity as a sweater, worn over the core of who we are. It is knit throughout our life by influential people in our lives and, eventually, by our selves. The sweater is started by our parents, who give it their best. As we get older teachers take on the task, and our friends join in too. There are threads of culture woven through, along with our interests, professions and important relationships. Our strengths and our weaknesses get in there, maybe out of proportion in places.

At some point in our lives, we might realize that we are wearing a sweater that no longer fits. For whatever reason, the identity that has grown up with us has become too big or too small, too long or too short. So we have to unravel, and reknit it for ourselves. We realize that we can adjust and shape it to better fit. Maybe we can even remove it altogether, but I think that must be much harder to do.

There are times in our unraveling, when it goes beautifully. Everything just comes apart easily and you can start to patch things together in a new way. I think this happened for me in Italy, as I rediscovered art and my creative side. After a couple of years of work I emerged with a new patch of my identity sweater, beautiful and colorful. These last couple of years I’ve worked to carefully knit the new and old patches together, finding a fit that works.

But there are other times in our reshaping, when you have multiple strands going at the same time – some unraveling, some knitting back up – and you get a knot. A snarly knot that doesn’t want to budge. All you can do is take some time to pick at it, work it loose. Figure out which strand goes where and how to integrate it.

I think that’s where I am right now, I’m working at a knot. Earlier this year I had multiple strands flying and all was going well. Then almost without me noticing, things started to get snarled up. The knot is a little too tight, and the only thing I can do is be careful and patient, wiggling it loose. Everything is at a standstill, until this knot is undone.

Somewhere on the other side of this knot is something new, I can feel it. A new patch to overlay and integrate with the rest of my identity sweater. But I have to work at this knot first. I’ll let you know when I’m done…

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Alone on the Hill

The wonderful thing about mobile photography is that it is, well, mobile. It’s with me anywhere I go. With a little downtime, I can create. Anywhere, anytime.

Exploring my sister’s back yard, a spot of bright color caught my eye. In the berm leading up the mountainside away from her yard, there was one lone poppy blooming. I climbed the steep hill and balanced precariously, trying to capture the flower while the breeze shifted it this way and that. After finally capturing a good image — nicely framed, in focus, without my shadow in it — I sat down in the Colorado sunshine and proceeded to mess it up, transforming it into something new. Something that expresses more than the original photograph. Something that gets to the essence of the poppy, instead of the poppy itself.

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Later I was passing the image around the table, sharing with my family. It’s an interesting thing to share in person rather than on the internet. On the internet, people can quietly ignore something they don’t like. You only really hear from those who DO like it. So seeing someone view my work in person as it was passed around the table, I could tell if they liked it or not. I got the unfiltered responses.

I discovered that not everyone likes the new direction my work is taking. I discovered they were surprised by the abstract nature of the art I enjoy creating. I discovered that these changes, which seem obvious and natural to me, are not obvious or even explicable to those who are dearest to me.

It does make sense… They haven’t been around me on a regular basis for a long time. They didn’t see me in the museums of Europe, discovering my attraction to colorful abstract art. They didn’t see me falling in love with Vasily Kandinsky, Mark Rothko or Paul Delaunay. They haven’t seen my playing around with paints and trying to capture the emotion of pure color and movement on a canvas. All they saw was the photographs. And now all they see is this dramatic transition of the art I share, because I’ve finally found the medium that combines my love of photography and abstraction in one place.

Yeah, I can see how that would be surprising.

Another thing that I discovered, as I found out they don’t all like this new direction of my work, is that I don’t care. I love what I am creating now. I am confident and comfortable with it as my own personal expression. I am comfortable with the idea that others won’t like it. Some don’t like it because it’s perceived as easy: “All you do is push buttons in software, and that’s just wrong.” Some don’t like it because they prefer the more literal interpretation of a photograph, and don’t think it needs to be transformed in any way. They liked my old style better.

That’s ok, because I don’t create for anyone else, I create for me. Some people will connect with it, some people won’t. That’s just the way art works. I don’t have to be hemmed in by anyone else’s rules and opinions.

And one final discovery out of all of this… it doesn’t mean they love me or I love them any less. My work is an expression of me, but it is not me.

That’s just as important to realize, I think.

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Monday Flowers

Happy Monday! The sun is shining and the flowers are blooming here in Oregon. Yesterday I was out exploring and discovered these beautiful orange-yellow flowers scattered various places along the side of the road. I loved how they were intermixed with the different plants growing along with them.

What were you up to this weekend? I hope it involved sunshine and something creative! If you weren’t around, don’t miss out on this month’s Exploring with a Camera, which posted on the weekend.

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Continuing the Search

My Market/Wheels exhibition came down a week and a half ago, but my quest for Market/Wheels images is not over. This has become an ongoing project for me. It’s a way for me to find a thread of similarity in disparate places around the globe. We’re discussing “Seeking Differences, Finding Similarities” this week in A Sense of Place, and this project comes to mind.

This image from San Francisco is a great addition to the series. What a wonderful scene it was! The painted brick trying to hide the graffiti, the broom and dustpan and the haphazard signs all make this a “real life still life” with some serious place personality.

I found the urban environment of San Francisco a perfect place to get Market/Wheels images, since the markets are often rolled out onto the street every morning and rolled back into the store at night. Revisiting this image reminds me that market season is gearing up here in my agricultural valley and it’s time for me to get out and seek new Market/Wheels images near home.

Do you have an ongoing project you are working on? It’s fun to have something to seek, and oh so satisfying when you find a new image for the series!

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Crossing Cultures

Where to start on San Francisco? Without a doubt, my favorite part of the city was Chinatown. Wonderful alleys to wander, with infinite interesting details to frame.

The mixture of the common and the unusual was a delight. I loved the cross of the cultures to be found in Chinatown. Seeing the different languages made me feel as if I were traveling abroad, and I found myself surprised when I would enter a store or a restaurant and someone would speak to me in English. In the two years I lived in Italy, I developed some deep-rooted associations between traveling outside my culture and language: If it’s not my culture, they won’t speak my language. It was interesting to see this assumption tested so obviously in a US environment.

The sights, the sounds, the details, and the textures of Chinatown made it my kind of place. We found ourselves wandering here, for at least a little while, on most days of our trip. I just wanted to drink it all in with my camera.

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