A “Century” of Progress

This is my 100th post for The ADD-Challenged Eye.

As I was considering what to write today, I started wondering what, if anything, I had actually learned in the last year. Of course, I’d acquired facts that I would not have otherwise possessed, but facts aren’t knowledge, they’re just information. Knowledge is something quite different, and I’m not entirely sure I can define what it is in mere words.

Looking back on the first 99 posts (and the dozen or so that I drafted and never posted), I searched for a theme. All along I had thought that I was just pulling random thoughts out of the ionosphere, but looking at my output in toto I can see a few common threads emerging.

First, as vain as this may end up sounding, I like most of my own work quite a bit. I say most because a lot of my own work that I post here is based on impulse or a specific purpose. If I just showed what I consider my best work here, those posts would be rare indeed, because the portfolio I consider “best” is vanishingly small.

When taken in the aggregate, my work has always had something of a schizophrenic quality to it as I’ve bounced around experimenting with different genres, different techniques, different points of view. Posting it here has forced me to consider it a little more carefully. It still drifts around, but now the drifting is within a much narrower range. I’m also learning to love color, although I still see much of the world in black and white.

Another thing I’m noticing is my enjoyment of the creative process quite apart from the results. I’m going out now and again and coming back with nothing, or nothing useful anyway, and still feeling a sense of satisfaction from the experience. It’s become more about total immersion in the world surrounding me, including the world inside my own head. You can learn a lot about a place just by looking, randomly, without an agenda. You find things that you might otherwise miss. You begin to see a world full of possibilities.

This has led me to a greater appreciation for the work of others, not just photographers but painters, sculptors, performance artists and the whole range of creative personalities. This even extends, to a degree, to work I don’t particularly like

The most important thing about my posts here, really, is that I get to be reminded constantly that, as a working artist, I get to be a part of something really wonderful. There is a huge community of creative people doing outstanding work, most of which won’t be seen in a museum or gallery. We’re celebrating the process of creating and sharing vision with people around the country and around the world simply for the joy of having done it.

These reminders are rays of warm sunshine in a world might otherwise be pretty cold and bleak. They are gifts that I give to myself, gifts that become even greater by sharing them.

RXM

The ADD-Challenged Eye