reflections (1977-2005)

WHERE I STARTED & WHERE I AM NOW (2005):

What is interesting to me can be seen in this image and in the opening images of EXCAVATIONS. In these images one can find early threads to much later bodies of work that evolved many years later in PARTICLE POOL (1994 to 2001) and LEELA (2005-). This particular image was made in 1977 at a stage where I understood little about the camera's multiple muscles and had not yet explored any serious photographers work. Which brings up an observation of an ongoing debate in artistic circles, is it better to go it alone and work without respect to the past (study art history) or risk recreating the wheel. 

What would (the above) later bodies of work look like, would they have come sooner, would they be more or less effective had the artist not begun his investigation of art history? Without a study of art history would they even exist? 

Here a question is posed rather than an answer given. Art provides no answers but poses many questions, particularly of the unseen (meditate through the layered veils of Cezanne or feel God in Van Gogh). When your ego comes back in control and tells you it sees paint, you must let go again.

Art for me thrives in small dark overlooked corners where discoveries seem fleeting and are hard won but nothing is ever finished or cornered, authentic journeys are necessary but not necessarily seen, and things out of reach always call and flicker in a darkness one can never fully illuminate. If one could we would lay, rest and have lost all curiosity.

When my eyes opened magic & fear or photo 101