Speaking for myself only, I think that as artists we need to get out of our little ruts, shake things up, create things that are outside our comfort zone, and outside our viewers' comfort zones.
Glorious things are created daily. Hourly. But after awhile an artist (and his or her viewers) grow weary of seeing the same things done the same way.
So we try to shake things up. Make our work look different from the (albeit wonderful) things people have been seeing. Sometimes what we do works, sometimes not. But at least we're experimenting, trying different techniques, different colors, different media. Whether it works or not is inconsequential. What matters is that we're learning, changing, having fun, and shaking up our viewers from time to time.
Can you imagine how boring it would be to always have every technique work all the time? Where's the challenge? Where's the problem to be solved?
I've been playing around with using a variety of techniques and textures, trying out different looks, and lately this combination that you see here has been appealing to me. (It's so convoluted I had to create a little "recipe" to follow that keeps me on track.)
I've been tweaking and altering the technique, and it doesn't apply to all my photos, it's often hit or miss, but it's fun and I like the lighter, brighter look I'm getting on certain coastal images, such as these first two from Maine and the bottom one from here on the Oregon coast.
I hope you enjoy seeing them. Whether you like the effect or not is immaterial (sort of). The point is that I'm attempting to shake things up a bit, not create the same old thing day after day.
If all someone made every day was wonderful muffins, even that would become tiresome. Well, photos, paintings, quilts, stained glass windows, doodles, music, etc. can suffer from the same "ho hum, what else ya got?" affliction. What are you doing to shake up your little art world? Your little corner of creativity in this all-too-short lifetime?
©Carol Leigh, who is expecting snow on the Oregon coast today . . . see, even the weather needs to shake things up a bit every so often!
