I’ve always seen art as the key to unlocking a path between our minds, hearts and the people around us. Verbal communication is a direct but fleeting medium; the things we say to others are soon forgotten, or at best survive without the exact context and form we used. Art has given me the opportunity to sit back and contemplate my thoughts and feelings, and then choose how to best express them in a permanent form. With the spoken word, so much of what I say is in the moment and a reaction rather than an expression.
As a child and through my teens, pencil, pen and ink where the tools I used to reflect the images in my mind. In those years, the world around me was new and fascinating, the driving force behind my art wasn’t creating new visions, it was replicating the ones I saw before me. The closer I came to reproducing those images with my own hands, the closer I came to what I though of as excellence.
With experience and age came a desire to interpret. I was no longer satisfied with simply copying the images I saw around me, I wanted to reflect my own unique perspective for others to see. The contrast between shadows and light, the opposing intentions of different angles, the flow of structure all captured my attention, but mostly, it was the contrast between the things we have built and the things we were given. I no longer wanted to produce static images, what I wanted to do was capture a moment in time, preserve it for others to see as I saw.
For the next twenty years I moved from film, to digital then to digital SLR. Often the world would seem an opaque copy of itself until an image would draw me in; then it would bloom in full colour and I would scramble to capture the moment.
I’ve always traveled, and the difference between my world at home and the one beyond never ceases to amaze me. I’ve shot thousands of pictures, looking for that one perfect expression. A few have come close, some, while not what I had planned were good images, most were simply a way of filling up my hard drive.
I attended a photography course, and in the instructor’s opening remarks he asked the class how many good photos they thought they could take from a role of 36 exposures. He then polled the class and the responses, predictably, ranged from a low of 10 to a high of “all of them”. He smiled and said he thought we were maybe less discriminating than we should be. He went on to say that if we were able to shoot a few decent photos from a role, a couple of good images a year and one great one in our lifetime we should consider our work a success. His words have stuck with me for many years and formed the basis on how I judge my own work.
As I approached my fifties, I felt a desire to not only replicate and interpret the world around me, I now wanted to create it; to have a free hand in changing the things I didn’t like or agree with, or simply wasn’t attracted to. I wanted to build stories on the images and themes that I saw before me. There are truly great photographers out there who are able to tell an entire story with a single image, I am not one of them though I wish that I were.
Once again I found myself with a pencil in hand and a blank sheet of paper before me, only this time it was the written word. Through a search I did online, I stumbled on a group called Indie Ink. They were a small community of amateur writers from all over the world who would each week put forth a hand crafted prompt. We would each then be given someone else’s and a week to create a piece of flash fiction from it. Part of the criteria was that you had your own blog to post the pieces to, so people in the group could read your work. The posts were then judged and the “best” ones posted on the site. I did this for a year and found myself increasingly drawn to the mystery of fiction writing. The group ultimately disbanded as these things often do, but my passion for writing carries on. I‘ve stayed connected with some of the people that I wrote with, and am always amazed at how small a place this world really is.
So now I write. And while many think the writer’s path is a lonely one, I once again have the privilege to meet inspiring, articulate people who’s grasp of language leaves me in awe. Great words are more than simply a page in a book, they are physical; when you speak them they manifest themselves in sensation, they engage your mind and your heart and connect you to the world around you.
For me, I now understand that my artistic expression isn’t unlike a competitive sport. I’m not competing with those around me, I’m not even competing with myself; my adversary is in the challenge to overcome the limitations I have in producing a work that truly reflects what I feel.
-Billy
