Nurture — Days 9 & 10
As you can see, a full week has elapsed between the two most recent entries in this blog. Sadly, that’s the nature of some of my disabilities; they leave me with low energy, consistent brain fog, and the need to recharge my batteries more often. To get back on track, I’ve made the decision to be less restrictive about how I engage with this Challenge. You can expect to see more combination days, and (sometimes) shorter posts, in order to regain balance.
Day 9 Prompt: Share a story about a times when you had to make a difficult decision. What factors did you consider, and how did you ultimately choose?
I’ve had to make many difficult decisions in my life. None of them were related to my art creation; rather, they were the result of very difficult circumstances in my life that I’m not comfortable sharing right now. However, in all cases, since becoming an adult, I’ve been aware that decisions have consequences…which means, to me, that I have to be willing to live with a consequences of any decision before making any final decision.
Day 10 Prompt: Tell the story of what kind of feedback you have received on your work and what impact it has had on your career.
Outside of what I received during art-school, I’ve had very little—approaching zero—feedback from the general viewing public on my work. In the current over three year span that I’ve shared my work via the internet, I can count the number of responses that weren’t versions of “that’s interesting” (with no clarification) on one hand. I used to believe that it was because my work wasn’t really all that “interesting”, and persons were just being kind in their comments. While that may very well be true, I’ve recently begun to believe that persons are unprepared for responding honestly and openly to art work—that isn’t in a gallery, from an established artist, or part of hour shared “history”.
Each of the pieces that I’ve put on websites is intended to force the viewer to ask questions—of the art, of themself, and of their environment. I intentionally use the landscape paradigm as a structure for my work, while presenting material that doesn’t easily fall in the landscape genre. I suspect that might cause a disconnect that viewers are only aware of on a subconscious level. I’m in the process of trying to bridge that (possible) gap with the my writing, my posts, and my engagement on social media. Get back to me in a bit on how that’s been working….
That’s it for this post, Gentle Reader. As always, be well…also…ask questions!
Gryph
