ku # 1140 • civilized ku # 2214 ~ fractured fairy tales & a poem lovely as a tree
Monday, June 4, 2012 at 02:07PM ;)
Au Sable River / Whiteface Mt. ~ Au Sable Forks / Clintonville, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenOn Sunday last, when I came across a scene (on the road to my house, 2-3 miles away), as documentarily recorded in the picture which accompanies this entry, I thought to myself, "I really need to transform this scene from what it is into whatever I want it to be. I am, after all, God's chief Assistant Art Director and He has created what's in front of me as just so much grist for my picture making mill."
The temptation was strong in me to stretch and warp significant features in the image (such as mountain ranges), to engage in radical modification of the color palette present in the image as captured (in a mere documentary fashion) by the camera, to remove and/or move significant elements of the photograph such as rivers, trees, rocks, etc., and to duplicate or, as long as I'm having at it, add significant elements to the picture.
But, even as such saccharin sugar plum visions danced in my head, something else came into my head that I had read:
I think that I shall never see
A "meaningful" picture lovely as a tree.
Such pictures are made by fools who can't see,
But only god can make a tree.
So, hell did not freeze over and I tried to just be in the moment, to see what was in front of me, and to picture it as truthfully as the medium and its apparatus allow.
Reader Comments (6)
Right on.
Livin' on the edge.
It's hard to improve on this.
Thank heavens you didn't bother god.
I think the last sentence you wrote (modified slightly) could actually be my entire artist's statement. So simple, to the point and true to the way I feel. Why have I labored so long trying to come up with something when I could've just asked you Mark? Damn you and your way with words.
A play on the poem "Trees" by Alfred Joyce Kilmer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Kilmer