Writing About my Work
I've never really been good at writing about my work. I like to write writing, and I also like to draw pictures. Together they can knot into some other thing in translation, but they never can be one another. I find myself tiptoeing around explicitly stating my larger justifications; perhaps because I'm acting on instinct and intuition, or perhaps to guard the impressions my work might leave beyond my own – a picture is a thousand words, and with so many pictures I don’t want to ramble.
Furthermore I have a tendency to distrust, or dismiss, things that are too explicit and clear. I much prefer overgrown paths to open highway – when you take your own route to find something, favoring the meandering scenic path, you’ll never forget the way.
There is a principle in painting called lost edges which says that to achieve a sense of realism, sometimes edges blur and lose themselves against each other. By leaving things out, and being conscious of vagueness, you can achieve something closer to truth than if you strived to perfectly illuminate everything. To round out the point – nothing is ever perfectly described. Sometimes it is too dim to make things out. Sometimes the event hasn’t happened yet, and it would be silly, or disingenuous, to describe it before. Sometimes it is better to let you make up your own mind, rather than tell it how it is. Sometimes things are forgotten, or misheard. That blurry space in translation, where you can tune the clarity, is where I prefer to operate.
Sometimes the idea of knowing why I'm working and what I'm heading towards doesn’t sit right with me. Perhaps this makes me aimless, wandering around with clouded eyes, but I think that claiming otherwise, in any curious person’s case, would be self deceiving. I believe those that know exactly what they're doing should probably get lost.
Furthermore I have a tendency to distrust, or dismiss, things that are too explicit and clear. I much prefer overgrown paths to open highway – when you take your own route to find something, favoring the meandering scenic path, you’ll never forget the way.
There is a principle in painting called lost edges which says that to achieve a sense of realism, sometimes edges blur and lose themselves against each other. By leaving things out, and being conscious of vagueness, you can achieve something closer to truth than if you strived to perfectly illuminate everything. To round out the point – nothing is ever perfectly described. Sometimes it is too dim to make things out. Sometimes the event hasn’t happened yet, and it would be silly, or disingenuous, to describe it before. Sometimes it is better to let you make up your own mind, rather than tell it how it is. Sometimes things are forgotten, or misheard. That blurry space in translation, where you can tune the clarity, is where I prefer to operate.
Sometimes the idea of knowing why I'm working and what I'm heading towards doesn’t sit right with me. Perhaps this makes me aimless, wandering around with clouded eyes, but I think that claiming otherwise, in any curious person’s case, would be self deceiving. I believe those that know exactly what they're doing should probably get lost.
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