I should take a pic of day #5 of ‘Photography Week’ at The Napkin Dad Daily
In photography or any other medium an artist is the one who is not trying to copy. They have in their head a vision, an idea, a concept, an attitude that compels them to create something out of it all. Something that is not just a news record of a person or event or place.
If they don’t have anything in their head when they start the process they know how to find it. They find it by being curious and fearless, by going places not easily arrived at, looking at things not easily seen, asking questions not easily asked.
What they come up with may start with the scene or person in front of them but it goes well beyond that to include who they are as well.
Quote by Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, Irish writer and raconteur
This is dedicated to some knuckleheads I had the honor of conversing with first thing this morning. They happened to be of the conspiratorial type, sure that the US is in the grips of a secret communist cabal.
But the danger isn’t really about those people, the danger is with people of any stripes, left, right, up down, Christian, Muslim, atheist, etc. who aren’t paying attention to evidence, proof and history.
They instead are purposely bending the little bits they do know (not much) to match their anger, their prejudices and their self-serving agendas.
Whether it be UFO true believers, anti-Obama birthers, anti-Bush anarchists or any number of groups, the test is whether they are truly interested in finding truth, figuring out solutions, including compromises, or if they are interested in just building on their wobbly prejudices with more true believers.
A vintage napkin from back in 2004, the last year I drew them for my daughters’ lunches. I think this is true of the public and those close to you. Arguing a point to no avail only to find them agree with it after someone on TV says it is frustrating. LOL
“Seriousness Is The Only Refuge of the Shallow.” – Oscar Wilde
When you come across one of those ‘I am so deep because I am so serious’ types, give him or her this quote and put them in their place! The person who can’t crack up about stuff is the person who is afraid to see deeply, not the other way around.
“Every portrait painted with feeling is of the artist not the sitter.” – Oscar Wilde
I think this is true at a deep level but I don’t think that truth denies that the portrait is also about the sitter. I think it is like a crime scene. The obvious fact is the dead body or the car being missing or the house being broken into. But the deeper investigation into the event will usually lead to the person who committed the crime, not the person who the crime was against.
“Truth is rarely pure and never simple.” – Oscar Wilde
I have come to see truth as a useful construction for most people. That doesn’t mean the ‘truth’ they believe isn’t true, it means their reasons for believing it have less to do with it’s truth and more to do with the believer’s needs. The believer wants things to match their world and so constructing a truth that validates that world is very helpful.
But equally interesting is the phenomenon of when a person turns their own world upside down, converts to a new ‘truth’, abandons an old one, rejects prior reasons something was ‘true’. That destruction, or deconstruction, is simply a process by which one ‘truth’ that no longer fits their needs is jettisoned and a new ‘truth’, one closer to reality maybe, maybe not, is found to replace the fallen ‘truth’.
