The Creative Process - Making the Hard Choices

Trinidad Reflections

I was recently in Trinidad, Colorado and walking along Main Street snapping reflections and a man stopped to ask me what I was taking pictures of. I pointed at the dirty window and told him to look beyond it to the world reflected in it. His face lit up when he saw what I saw. My hope is my work, be it paintings or photography, produce that epiphany again and again and again to all the people that do not stop and ask me what it is I am taking a picture of.

Artists create not in a vacuum or silence but within a world of their own making which exists only because of awareness of the world outside. My goal, as an artist, is to communicate to that world what I see. And my chance to do that is to enter exhibitions and contests and launch shows. I just sent four new paintings off to The Old Pass Gallery in Raton for the New Mexico Women Artists exhibit in March. And yesterday I went through literally hundreds of photographs to select four or five to have printed to enter in the Ralph Solano Photography Contest in April.

Between Seasons

It is not all about the photograph. It is about the photograph's voice. There are lots of photographers with fancier equipment that can catch every single crater on the full moon or stop a bird in flight across a marsh, but for me photography, like painting, is about the message. And so first the photograph has to speak to me even though it could have been months since I and the camera had that conversation with the subject or, like the opening picture of this blog, it could have been just a few days ago when I clicked the shutter.

Old Chevy

It could be one which has always been a personal favorite of mine. Or once I took and forgot I took until the photo review began again.

In the Rear View Mirror

I have two photographs already printed which I can enter into this exhibition. I can only submit five, but I found myself sending off another four jpegs to my printer. That is where photography gets expensive.

Burn

But the message never gets out of your head until someone else sees it. My head can be a very noisy place. Definitely not a vacuum or silence. And it has gotten noisier since I have been planning for my one woman show in July at the Main Street Gallery in Trinidad, Colorado: Meraki. The essence of myself I put into my work be it photography, painting or poetry.