Each time a year closes and another opens it provides us all with an opportunity to move forward and transform ourselves into people wiser and more thoughful than we knew possible the year before. May 2012, a year of great potential be better than any of us can imagine!
The Fool Embraces the Folly of Worry 2011
Some time ago an art critic in Atlanta said that I wasn't a painter but a person who thought a lot who just happened to paint. Well I don't think my photographs are turning out any different. I'm always doing things to them, trying to say some things I've been thinking about .... and at the same time violating the art form I'm using in the process. Writing on pictures, typing on pictures, just making marks on pictures .... a lot of the time without any real consistency ... just working with the moment ... what ever strikes me.
The three pictures below are examples of what I mean. They are from a time when I was running around in cemeteries a couple of years ago taking pictures and thinking a lot about how we like to know the details about murder (real or fiction) and dead people (whether we know the victims or not) and at the same time don't like to talk about death and dying but feel like we must ritually memorialize dead flesh when people we've known leave us alone to face life without them. Human beings are amazing ... walking and talking and thinking and making up stories and everything else.
Renewal 2010 - 2011
While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die. ~Leonardo Da Vinci
Woman At Gravesite with Stripe 2009 -2011
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die" - a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live. ~Mark Twain
Cemetery Bullseye 2011
God pours life into death and death into life without a drop being spilled. ~Author Unknown
UPDATE
I recently found out that the CENTER FORWARD 2011 show that includes one of my conceptual composites, now up at the Center for Fine Art Photography will be traveling to the Denver Colorado Airport in early July and will be there through August.
I recently got an email telling me that I have been included in a show at the Center for Fine Art Photography entitled CENTER FORWARD; a survey of new and current trends in photography. The show opens on May 6th in the centers main gallery in Fort Collins Colorado, so I have to send them a framed print of the picture and consider myself fortunate to be selected from over 2600 images from around the world, ... but it's hard to get really excited with everything that's going on in the world. I also have to include a statement about the photograph and what I have to say about why I made it and what it means to me is even more troubling. So what do I get from showing the work? Is showing the work, no more and no less ... I do wish I was happy about it all right now but I'm not. Maybe I will feel better later.
This is the piece the juror chose:
Untitled 2010
I've had variations of this image in my head since the mid nineties. While I was living in Atlanta I made some drawings that had parts of what I was trying to express but this effort gets closer than I have ever gotten before and I'm sure like many artist I will come back to this subject matter over and over again ... each time hopefully getting closer.
BANDAGED HEAD SELF PORTRAIT 2011
I finished this piece last year but had no idea what to do with it because I just couldn't figure out what to call it. Over the past several months I've given it several names, none of which I care to mention here because none of them really fit ... too much was always missing. So it remains untitled even though I think it is time to show it and own it.
UNTITLED 2010
I am one of the artists participating in the Binding Threads Show at the Corner Store Gallery on Capitol Hill. The show is running through February 21st. Try to get by and check out the great work by 7 African American artist. Below are a few pictures from the reception party that took place on Saturday the 29th of January.
http://cornerstorearts.org/
Mr. Dyson himself checking out one of my pieces.
Ann G. Allen co-curator for the show talking with Dyson
Wayon during the artist talk.
Two women in conversation underneath my work.
The show had a great turnout of art lovers and collectors.
Acceptance of the things I cannot change and the courage to work at the things I can is the 2010 take home message for me. I have been working on the piece below for a a week or so and just completed it this morning. More and more I am working to turn my inherent critical nature into that of an observer when the circumstances appear to involve our collective evolution and not some quick fix. Picking fights with brick walls seems way too silly these day though I am still always ready for a good debate when there is something to be gained by it.
I am looking forward to great opportunities to make art and say what I need to say with all the understanding and compassion I can muster. Creative 2011 to all!
Remote Access Time Piece 2011
I took this shot of my friend Gwen before our session in my studio officially started. I tend to do this a lot and I am often pleasantly surprised for it.
