Outdoor life and artistic expression
Discover the transformative power of curiosity in artistic expression
Hello, how are you? Are you ready for December and all that it brings? It’s been quite a week for drama here, first snow and then lung-freezing heart-thumping sub-zero temperatures and hoar frost. It did feel quite Christmas-y. There, I’ve said it…
I have plenty of small things noticed to share with you, preserving the memory and moment of things that lift a day beyond ordinary. I’ve again tried writing short to accompany the visual.
A longer contemplative read about the importance of curiosity follows and you may need to click on "View entire message" to read the full post in your email app.
I’ve been enjoying
with and . The first invitation came just after I’d started here and felt too soon for me, but this is now a good time to review and grow my offering to you. Last week’s prompt fed into my writing about why I’m here in Small Beauty Noticed. This week we had the challenge to write and edit a post about something we’re ‘good at’ in 60 minutes. Nothing like being put on the spot. Rabbit in the headlights anyone? So I opted for ‘curiosity’, its value in artistic expression and in developing your unique creative vision and style. I draw on my own experience and offer some ‘takeaways’ in the essay that forms the second part of this week’s writing.This week I’ve been noticing
Wednesday: Fat flakes fill the morning sky. Lumpen wetness slides and sticks to shoes by afternoon, the sky still pale. The night promises ice.
Thursday: Red squirrel buries peanuts beneath the bench. Snowflake lands on nose; catch them on your tongue. Small beauty noticed.
Friday: Winter is official, and wonder land. A dusting of snow and freezing fog worked magic overnight. A cold morning out, but the kind that makes your heart sing.
Saturday: How cold was the night? Ice is no longer confined to outside. Over the hills the sky blossoms in shades of lilac and mauve. I’m out before the sun. First the birch, in time to see them sparkle, then back to the new grasses. I end up as cold as they look.
Sunday: A third night of hard cold sees galaxies of stars expand their universe across dark puddles. Under a flat white sky the mundane take on unexpected beauty. Even brown desiccated thistles catch my eye with their twisting lines and sharp points.
Monday: The squirrel is burying peanuts again. Overnight the decorations have been taken down. Powder turns into ice after a slick sleet fall. Vapour hangs low and I wonder if the spirit of cold is slowly lifting from the Earth, or returning to it.
I left the camera at home, certain that there would be no beauty today. I was wrong and have to make do with a phone shot of the atmosphere among the trees.
Tuesday: The stars have collapsed into obscure thick glazed puddles. My magical field is revealed to be nothing more than ryegrass. It’s a day of ice, by turns treacherous and deafening underfoot. Where trees meet moss, softness is found amid blaeberry.
Wednesday: Blue sky, white rime. Below zero all day. Walk in the sun, look for precious things. Get lost within heather (see cover image). Count deer in the wood: 16+. Talk about this place.
For the Curious
If I look back, I can see it took me a long time to get here. To a place where I feel comfortable and where I’m doing my own thing, largely free from the sway of ideas and images that greet each day, each hour, each minute...
Initially, I just took photographs. I had no training, no structure or discipline. No guide. I was wandering aimlessly, but I had one thing - curiosity. For the way that a little off-square viewfinder made me notice the world, and the satisfaction of trying to arrange everything within in a pleasing way. My first films were a revelation; the nicer images encouraged me. But I didn’t know where I was going, and photography slipped into being little more than a record of places visited. I can remember being perennially disappointed when the photos came back from the lab. But I kept taking them.
Around 20 years ago something happened, I’m not sure what, but I applied myself with new energy. This was a good time for photography magazines and books by landscape photographers. I read copiously, still took plenty of duds, but at some point I began to improve. These were still days of film and it was a flatter learning curve with the constraints that imposed.
My images were inevitably influenced by those that I had seen in print. And yes, I set out to visit some of those places and tried to make my own interpretations. I might have carried on like this, but before I dipped a toe into social media I stopped by my local river one day. It was nothing much, just a small stone that caught my eye - or more especially the way that the water flowed over and around it. It was however the beginning of the proverbial new chapter. I found something that made me curious, I went back, I worked in a different way switching to shutter priority and using a digital compact. I responded to the immediate feedback and learned that it was more important to experiment and fail, than to try to control all the permutations and get it right. Which. Is. Exactly. What I had been trying to do before.
I did this for a decade, going back to that same river, those few small places with little other than a few inches of water that had a life and energy to it that I found more exciting than the land. I no longer cared what others were doing; this spoke to me.
If I look back at the images they have been many things. Their colour surprised me - it wasn’t until I got to an exhibition hanging that I realised how bright they were. They were about pattern and light and movement. They’re all largely abstract and mostly square format. They were an expression of curiosity.
I wonder now where I would have ended up if I hadn’t moved. My self imposed constraints were valuable, but would I have continued to evolve? I’d started to make hand made books and embellish prints; it felt like there needed to be something more than output onto fine art paper. Only later did I realise that at the point of image review and printing I had stopped experimenting.
Since moving here two years ago, I’ve again worked close to home. I’m very fortunate to be able to walk from my door; this does feel like an essential part of my process.
I’m still looking into water, still experimenting, still curious.
I’ve made a collection of images of and about water, in all its states.
I’ve experimented with other media.
But mostly I’m noticing, and writing - and words, especially here in this (Substack) place and this (long) form, are helping me to reflect and to make connections between the strands.
At the moment I’m photographing the land, nature, vegetation… place. It isn’t that water has stopped talking to me, but it’s part of the development. I’m mostly looking through… seeing things as if they were water. With softness, with fluidity. It’s allowing me - finally - to see both the photo making and the mixed media as part of the whole. I’m now noticing not just small beauty, but that these aren’t distracting diversions. It’s part of me working this place out, and my relationship to it. There is a greater part in it for seasonality, for mixing media, for experimenting, for being curious.
So if I have anything to share it is this. Don’t get hung up on subject. Learn enough so that you can work instinctively with your medium of choice. But treat it as a process - don’t focus on the outcome (which is all too easy with photography). I’ve talked about small stones, and polishing my Substack stone. This path and process too is a stone that once we find, we need to polish. to play with. to hold in your hand and turn over. This recurring theme of stones isn’t one I expected to encounter. And of course water too wears away at the stone, rounds its edges, smooths its surface. Perhaps that’s what it’s doing to me?
I won’t tell you where to go, or even where I've been; geotagging would be pointless. My work is about place - the local but universal - and nature, and water. But it is through me about expression, about curiosity.
All you need to do is find something that makes you hesitate, that intrigues you. Free yourself from expectation. Push against perfection. Be open to both journey and failure. At the outset you may not know what you want, but you will soon learn what you don’t…
“You might as well be yourself”, as Oscar Wilde may or may not have said, “everybody else is already taken”.
From this you may wish to take away:
Don’t be a mirror for others, only yourself and your unique view of and relationship with the world.
Don’t follow the herd. Set off on your own journey. Is this visual, or writing, or simply spending time in nature? What makes you curious? Take note of what calls to you, and what you push back against.
Give yourself permission to play. What? If? I?
Feel free to fail. Don’t look for perfection, but for small pebbles to collect and begin to polish.
Build in some constraints. They will force you to be more creative.
Keep going back. We learn and evolve through repetition.
Writing this has prompted me to think of Talking Heads’ song ‘Once in a Lifetime’, reputably about moving though life on autopilot. Through this - spending time in nature, photography, art, writing - life isn’t the same, and we’re very much conscious of the moment and our place in it.
We all find ourselves at places in life and wonder: Did I choose it? Did it just happen? Were we unlucky, or lucky? This noticing, making, stringing words together is my own star chart, my way of navigating all the things I might otherwise get lost in.
When I look the song lyrics up, I am reminded that there is water there too. Always water.
I’ve been away from the water for a while, distracted first by autumn riches and then by winter’s arrival. But I have been noticing how the images I make, like best, are always shaped by it.
Thank you for reading FLOW. If you’ve enjoyed this and it sparks something for you, please let me know. A like or a comment, or restacking if you’re using the Substack app always brightens my day. If you value my work my work you can now help to support it through a paid subscription.
If you’d like to catch up with more of my writing and images you’ll find them on my Substack home page.
My photography and mixed media art live here.
Until next week,
Beautiful writing and photography as always.
Fabulous photos with so many beautiful patterns!