On Art

“The difficulty with color is to go beyond the fact it is color – to have it be not just a colorful picture but really a picture about something. It’s difficult. So often color gets caught up in color and becomes merely decorative. Some photographers use color brilliantly to make visual.. →

Ahmad Babbahar – Blues Musican

Driving home from
Seattle one night, I noticed the way television sets reflected off ceilings or
out the windows of apartments and houses—sort of a free light show. I spent
some time thinking about it as I drove on to the ferry. I live.. →

To be called a craftsman has become
passé. Today many who are competent at the craft of photography have become
self-proclaimed artists. The totality of their education is from online
tutorials about composition or the technical side of how to make an image. Left
with no more.. →

Rules should be thought of as speed limits signs in
Montana, a suggestion.

All the so-called rules—the rule of thirds, color, composition,
line, perspective, and even processing rules—are nothing more than a convention
of accepted ways to assemble an image or form. These.. →

I left AMU with a limited budget and no car.
Earlier that year I had created a show out of what marble and soapstone I could
collect. The show amounted to about 40 small pieces of work inspired by Inuit
art and some Japanese work I was studying. Each of the pieces had an archaic–northern→

When I was 21 the need for summer
work—along with the idea that it was a bad ass job—led me into logging. No
matter what part of logging you were involved in it was damn hard, dangerous
work. Logging was an introduction to mortality and living large in community
with unforgettable.. →

When I was climbing in the late 1960’s, we were on
our own. Bad decisions or getting in beyond our skill
level could be fatal. Pushing the boundaries of what we could do made us
far better–and faster–than if there was a way to back out when things got tough. There was→

Many take as truth the idea of the first step being the hardest; actually beginning is the easy part. Beginnings are full of hopes, dreams and rosy views. We start with a vision of the end and a belief that nothing will be too difficult to overcome as we head towards our goal. The reality is projects.. →

The finest craftsmanship and beautiful materials don’t make a work of art. They will make a beautiful object that is a joy to hold and view and one that provides the same pleasure each time you see or hold it.

This is true also for some photographs and other works of painting or sculpture… →

Voice is not your style. Style is something that is copyable and falls into a set of categories or combination of them. Voice is unique and only belongs to one. Vision can be shared, style can be copied, subject can be repeated but voice belongs to the individual and is unique.

There seems.. →