So a move...a big move... a move across the country in fact, from Illinois to Way DownEast Maine almost to the Canadian Border. I can actually see Canada from my house. When I sold my house I also sold my studio, my refuge, my prison. I saw moving as an escape from all that anyone knew of my present...laying the groundwork for a blank canvas for my future. I sold ninety-nine-point-99 of my gear, props, backdrops, “schtuff”, even my lights (the lights were hard to give up kind of like a crutch). But give it up I did. I had grand ideas of stripping back my process like peeling back the layers of a decaying onion with the hopes that the layer lying just below was still fresh and useable. I was going to go back to the basics. I felt like photographing people for so long had exsanguinated my lifeblood from my creative veins. I was a shell, with with a huge creative block. The fear that my spark was out or at least almost out never far from my thoughts. Photographing people was always a high for me, trying to get the client to open up bit by bit until their vulnerable ”ish” was laid out bare for the square piece of glass I resided behind to capture it away. When that little bit of their ”ish” was read and wrote onto the memory card it breathed a bit more life into me. Many cultures do not allow their photographs to be taken as they believe it fractures off some of their soul to be lost forever within the camera. I believe this to be true except I believe that piece, that glow or glint in an eye, the crooked smile, that whistful set of a jaw, reminiscent of prior generations that set their jaw in just that same way, that fraction of a soul I believe goes through the camera and into the soul of the photographer. An “ish” zombie if you will. So I digress...this big, grand move would free me, free me from the self imposed constraints of my artistic perspective. I would no longer be photographing portraiture I exclaimed excitedly only bear, moose, loons, whales, ships, and sunsets. I have FREED myself! And for about a month that was the case. Until the portraitess in me whispered against the inside of my skull ”soooo whatchadoin”?.
I live in an artistic community. The arts are embraced at every turn here which is amazing. Coming from a self-fueled and highly competitive environment it was as comforting as a warm bath at the
end of a long, cold day. People are supportive, they are friendly and noncompetitive. They are enthusiastic about culture and how it impacts and enhances life. It also is very much an environment of self promotion as far as getting your name out there. “Ain’t nobody gonna do it fer ye here”. I have been encouraged by the overwhelmingly positive feedback on my work but I find it so very hard to shove my proverbial foot in anyone’s pretty, brightly-colored, gallery door asking (née demanding) for wall space. How can I sell my work if I find myself holding back when I should be breaking down the doors saying “everyone says there’s nothing like mine around you simply MUST hang me” ha! Hang my work!?!?! But what if my exsanguination was too complete? What if my artistic life blood is now anemic? What if those lights I so cavalierly got rid of were the magic fairy dust over my previous work? There I was someone, a fish with a name...whether that name was artist, bitch, amazing, bullheaded, inspiring, too far out, too loud, too quiet, not enough too much...at least my gear bag was full of adjectives, full of names, words, descriptions-it was full. Here I am the same fish but in a different pond... and my gear bag is decidedly empty...
For Now!
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