Life&Lemons
Slade D.
-
Medium: Google Pixel 4a Phone camera
"artistic process" is a phrase I do not think should be used much, as it is pretty ignorant to how art actually works. From my basic understanding of art, it is an expression. Expression of what? That is up to the artist. This expression is unique to every artist to a certain degree. Art is something someone created to express a unique thing to them. Of course this varies and the word "unique" is sometimes hard to attach to a mediocre picture of a building, object, or person. But none the less, it is all unique.
The word process means "a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end." It is implied that a process is done multiple times, repeated, again and again. When I think "process" I think factories, conveyors, and mechanical machines toiling away to make identical and unchanging products. I think of when something deviates from this process, it gets tossed away as a failure.
So is art as an expression from an artist, really as special, or unique if it was cut from a template? Is confining yourself as an artist to one way of thinking really how you achieve your goal of creating? To me, the answer is no, I can respect an artist who masters one thing completely, whether that be, painting, an instrument, sculpting and so on, but to streamline the creation of something, are we not losing something? A part of art that makes its presence so beautiful? Perhaps I am misunderstanding the concept of the artistic process, perhaps I am ranting about nothing, or perhaps this stream of thought is my artistic process.
Whenever I take a photo, or create anything with an artistic purpose, in the back of my head I am thinking, "how can I set this apart from everything else, how can I push myself to make something different, or special, what meaning can I put into this thing I am creating? What does this bring to the world or myself?". Humans were gifted with the ability to create new things out of preexisting ideas, why not push this gift, and use it to its full potential?
On the contrary to everything I just said, when I take a photo, it is normally complete impulse. The dance of muscles and nerves that automatically pulls out the camera/phone to capture some moment in time that I probably won't remember or care about. What's the significance of the 20 pictures of that bush? The only answer I can give you is, "I don't remember really, it might just be that it looked interesting". But in the moment it is often just me trying to do something I haven't taken a picture of yet. Or if it is something I've taken uncountable pictures of, there is something I noticed each time to warrant each picture.
Have you ever gone on a massive tangent?
If you've read my deranged rantings you might have already surmised that I am not the most sedentary person. I have ADHD and love to talk about things in detail, so apologies for the lack of cohesion and the length. Personally I think my photographs are quite mediocre, even when I find something new and cool to capture, so my best bet on actually leaving an impression on you dear reader, is through words. I was told to enter in this competition for school, I sped through the first time with little effort, begged to retry, and here is my proper attempt.
Thank you for your time, I apologize again for the long diatribe on art and how I work, not confident if this is what you intended, however I am quite satisfied with this.
Happy New Year! (yes I stayed up till midnight to do this)
-
Creativity to me means creating something from other things you find around you, a combination of things you know with a spin on it. Creating something new out of nothing is impossible, so creativity to make something new from those around you.
