"What is a muse? In its purest form, a muse is perhaps best defined as something that triggers inspiration in an artistic or creative sense. It doesn’t have to be an inanimate object; most artists’ muses tend to be people.
Creativity is impossible to separate from inspiration.
By trying to photograph someone repeatedly, it says both that there’s perhaps more to capture than is possible in a single frame, as well as all of the past frames being insufficient or incomplete in some way".
It's proved to be a difficult week.
It started with having to close my Deviant Art portfolio (due to them no longer facilitating older web servers, which I have to use) - a link back some seven years to some wonderful comments from other photographers across the world - and it ended with my having to cancel two of my principal outdoor shoots of the summer, as the English weather, after getting on for some fourteen months, is still refusing to deliver something resembling warmer days for more than a fleeting few hours.
It's frustrating, to say the least, but none of that, in a larger context, hardly matters.
What did matter was that yesterday, I was able to sit down with a young lady who has been working with me since last March and have a real heart to heart discussion about the wonders of life and the sheer privilege and delight of being able to be creative in this fashion, and what it really says about us.
The conversation reminded me that what all of this activity is really all about is a 'peeking through the window' to glean a glimpse, catch a taste, of the richness, the fragrance, of what all the beauty, all the grace says about what is at the very depth of us... the yearning to be part of something more than the futility and the frustration of what so often becomes 'life'.
Art drives us to engage with more than the drudgery. When we hear 'that song' or glance a view which stops us dead, we know, in such moments, that we'd give anything to truly "be" there - not to just be a spectator, but to be transported into all that such a moment holds.
In the conversation Jesus has with the women at Jacob's well in John 4, we see how the intention of what truly matters is to lift our sights from the drag of the monotony of our views (be they practical, relational or spiritual - the women concerned here raises all three) to the real landscape of the reality we are engaged with. There is actual meaning and significance, of eternal stature, Jesus assures her, in this life. She goes away a changed person.
Life rushes us by, and we seek to do what we can to catch some of its wealth, but sometimes, we really need to come aside and listen to the real 'conversation' that is underneath what so often takes our time, because when we do, it allows us to re-orientate our perspective, and see what really counts.
Images: Beneath the Thicket. Model: Vicci. Daydream. Model: Chrissie. Rainy Afternoon: Models: Magenta, Kari & Loella.
Images: Beneath the Thicket. Model: Vicci. Daydream. Model: Chrissie. Rainy Afternoon: Models: Magenta, Kari & Loella.
Many years ago I was in a shop in Boulder, Colorado, called "Into the Wind," that specializes in kites, Frisbees and other flying toys and things that use wind, when I heard a musical tone that stopped me dead in my tracks--pure yet complex, percussive yet long-ringing. It turned out to be from a pyramid-shaped wind bell, three-sided, each of whose sides produced a different tone. But that moment of wonder lives with me. And I often think that I live for such moments. "The value of a life is not determined by the number of moments you breathe, but the number of moments that take your breath away."
ReplyDeleteYour first paragraphs describe an experience so familiar I have to wonder how many of us continue to create fine art out of spiritual necessity. Yes, I do miss the community of dA and my number of major shoots has dwindled. Yet, when we have that model or photographer in our midst who embodies the inspiration to craft with light something pure, honest, and beautiful, perhaps it's richer now. Do you feel you quietly brought your heart and soul to this shoot? The image with the bed is sheer light and loveliness. I love your delicacy here.
ReplyDeleteArt heals.
Art, I think, allows us to touch something of what is meant to permeate every fiber of our existence, but, currently, can only be gleaned in special moments. Sometimes, we encounter them in a piece of music, in a scene from a book or a film; a still moment in nature or the knowing touch and smile of another, but all of this, and more besides, touches our deepest hunger for a purity, a beauty, an ecstasy only found when we finally reach home - the realm which will surround us with life emptied of all the pain and anguish and made replete with the weight and serenity we all know has eluded our race since the exile from the garden. We cannot help but be ravished by such sweet enchantment.
ReplyDeleteYour words are rhapsodic. It is the music of life we seek in all its artistic forms. Only art can order the chaos of life, and in that order we see the divine nature of things.
ReplyDelete