Art and Life

That sweet night; a secret.

Nobody saw me;

I did not see a thing.

No other light, no other guide

Than the one burning in my heart.

~John of the Cross

I am hooking up today for the first time in a while at The Creative Exchange. What I love about Lisa's approach is the emphasis on love; your camera in one hand, she says, your heart in the other. 

Yay.

In a way, I guess, I'm celebrating. It's been exactly a year since I began learning Photoshop Elements. It was a huge curve for me, and over the year, with the help of some online courses, I've gone from pretty much daily wanting to throw my computer across the room to becoming a fairly competent user. Along the way, I've had hits and misses, successes and failures, some good photos, some bad; I've watched my art grow; but the one thing that has eluded me is a sense of my own creative vision and my own unique style; what was missing was some invisible thing that longed to be expressed, a feeling maybe, something that I could not have articulated, but knew the moment I saw it. 

In the past couple of weeks I've started to see it. Something's coming together, it began with a simple thought to photograph the things that I love and that I've been surrounding myself with for years. The books, vintage dishes and painted-peeling things, candles, shells I've collected on my travels, the flowers I buy each week when I grocery shop; all that I love to look at and be around, that float my boat and even better, feed my soul. It seems simple, but somehow I'd been missing it.

How can we go wrong when we move toward what we love? Not just art, but in our daily lives (which are also art, the blank canvas of our everyday lives...). I was told on Moloka'i that the very foundation of the native Hawaiian spirituality is discernment.  To pay attention, to discern what does it for us and what doesn't, and make a conscious choice to move toward one and away from the other.

As in art, so in life. Or is it the other way around? Not that it really matters. And here, another gift of the dark night.

Thanks Lisa...