And life goes on... At least it sparkles.

Fairy Dust

Finally got around to processing some of my most recent shots this evening while watching Macgyver of all things.  (I don't remember it being quite this corny when I was a kid, but on the other hand I didn't used to thing the old James Bond flicks were cheesy either...)

The thing that really catches my attention with the Fairy Dust photo is the glowing of the golden pollen against the tissue-paper-like petals.

Looking back through the galleries (almost 500 photos in one alone O.o) it came as somewhat of a surprise the impact the recent changes in my life have had on the amount of work I've been able to post to my site over the past couple of months.  I mean I'm not really surprised, but its still kinda sad statement on how I've had to prioritize things.  Last summer was a flurry of photos and plants everywhere in the house, and this summer it hasn't been and I feel will continue to not be.

Part of its not having a yard to shelter my many photo subjects in.  Plants don't tend to fare well on my exposed deck.  Part of its working uber many hours for day job-related stuff that I'd better be getting a freaking raise for in July.  And part of it is actually having to stick to a budget for the business.  (Stupid rent and being financially responsible :-/ )

But I also think a piece of it is dealing with the remaining emotional crap from the turmoil earlier this year.  Grrr and damn him for continuing to get me down.  I did manage to skip out on the company barbeque this past weekend in favor of some much needed shoot time.  And I wasn't really up to playing an extended game of Happy Families where I'm one of the few single people standing at an event filled with couples, kids, and dogs. 

Happily I've started being inspired to go flower hunting again just this past week.  At least my website is running to the point of being super low maintenance, and it, unlike me, has been having a splendid month.

Here's hoping there's some big sale in the future so I have more funds to buy flowers or at least pay off all the frames I picked up at the uber sale on Saturday.

visit Samantha Byrnes' gallery online...

Someone Else's Epiphany

A friend of mine and I have ongoing friendly argument. She has a formal art degree and is very into books on technique and theory. Art as defined by someone else. And my art is all instinct and emotion and spontaneity, without any formal education, without the list of does and don'ts, without the "proper forms" running through my head like some demented talking kiwi doll.  So we wrangle back and forth in the ultimate battle of form versus inspiration. 

When there are no flowers to photograph I paint crazy tree-scapes and my feel of how souls see themselves. 

So this past week she and I met up for dinner and I passed my latest painting on for her to deliver to its intended recipient.  I also tried to talk her into coming back over for the upcoming three-day weekend to hang out and maybe go walk the Cherry Creek Arts Festival.  Below was her email response to me this morning. 

"So I spent a good part of the long drive home (all 5.5 hours through road construction) imagining ways you could build specialty lamps and a multi-level table with glass plates and turn your tree paintings into collages of paint, flower petals, stained glass, beads, water droplets, feathers and silk or velvet skies.  I even thought, “Well, that can be the ultimatum for driving all the way back over next week to visit for the July 4th holiday!  We must build this table.”

And then I realized it’s not fair of me to try to push a change on your art, nor is it fair for either of us for me to live vicariously through your art. 

And I honestly don’t want to go to Cherry Creek and look at a bunch of other people living successful lives as snooty artists.

If I want happiness and discovery and a sense of success through art, I should stay home and paint.

How about if we plan something in early August instead, okay?  And I won’t make you build a table of any sort."

Evidently hell has slightly frosted over and  I've scored (temporary???) reprieve. I wished her happy painting. 

UPDATED NOTE...

The reprieve lasted all of a week before talk of making lamps began.  O.o

visit Samantha Byrnes' gallery online...

Bleed Over

My skin still looks see-through 

And I feel underneath like a fake..."

Brothers by Penny & Sparrow

I always find it interesting and frustrating that the very different areas of my life bleed into each other. I spent several frustrating hours today trying to get ADFS running on my test domain controller without a definitive success. And now, riding the train home, I find myself not wanting to apply for a local art gallery show. The irony is that my success, or lack there of, with a system that every training and blog blatantly admits is EXTREMELY complicated, has absolutely nothing to do with an art show submission. 

Hell I should probably apply to the show anyways. The last time I applied to a show while wrangling with a super annoying tech problem (file server crashing with too many concurrent OS X 10.9 SMB connections) I got in, and that was Art Denver. 

visit Samantha Byrnes' gallery online...

How Sweet A Sorrow Success...

"It's amazing how people define roles for themselves and put handcuffs on their experience and are constantly surprised by the things a roulette universe spins at them..."  Terry Prachett

Sometimes Life's Not Fair

Yesterday I received the call that I had been moved from the wait list of a promising new show to the accepted category.  I was elated at the news, especially since the promotional company running the show has an exceptional reputation for events.  And yet it was also a bitter-sweet moment.  What cost success? I asked myself, not in terms of how the events of my life affect me but in the effects of my life on others.

Do my successes give other people hope and inspire them to continue forward in their own lives or do they hold the events of my life up in comparison with their own and get caught up in the differences?  Do hearing about the events in my life weigh them down or lift them up?

There are people in my life who, at least from the outside, appear to be, and profess to being, extremely frustrated by the direction their journeys have taken, by the list of tasks and objects they perceive to be in their way.  I sometimes wonder if my successes, achieved by actions motivated not by the head but by the heart, frustrate them to the point of despair.  Those with art degrees who struggle to create while I, in play and meditation, turn out breathtaking pieces.  Those with their rules and lists flounder while I float by. 

Intellectually I know that trying to help them into flow, into creativity, is about as helpful as trying to teach them to fly by picking themselves up by their shoelaces.  Flow and creativity are things that people have to come to from within, by finding their own path.  Am I helping to push them towards that creative epiphany or towards yet more despair and frustration?  And I find myself having to make a conscious effort to allow their frustration and despair to wash over me like salt water on glass, to not let them create for me a post around which my efforts would warp for other people can create immovable obstacles in our lives as easily as we can if we let them.

One of these people is about to have her 31st birthday this week.  She feels trapped in her current job and is allowing herself to be overwhelmed by the list of tasks from the head instead of allowing the heart to drive.  I haven't yet made the call to her to tell her my good news because I'm honestly concerned that hearing about my success would cause her more harm than good...

visit Samantha Byrnes' gallery online...

Before Becoming Postless

It occurs to be that I harp on the need to not create posts when navigating through life without giving the required precursor step of being centered in oneself first. Without that center, without knowing who one are underneath all the labels and external influence, not creating posts can cause one to be buffeted about like a rubber duck in a toddler-filled kiddie pool.  When our sense of self definition hasn't been determined, and by determined I don't mean some static list of characteristics and qualities but more an indescribable form of self, without posts acting as signs its far too easy to allow others to decide who we are.

Unfortunately the process of discovering the layers of one's true self begins with silence, with opening the space in one's life for change and insight. Most of us come to silence through the lack of interaction with others.  A break-up, a move to a new city. And the space has to be peppered with moments without noise, without the myriad of electronic distractions that fill our souls with static. Most people never take the time, are frightened of the quiet, and so the process of discovering the true self takes years and decades longer than it could.

Believe it or not there's actually a song by Twenty-One Pilots talking about that silence called Car Radio.

Without center and without posts a person's definition of self becomes mailable with the impressions of others. What they think of as important and who they perceive (or desire) us to be.  What on Earth, it may be asked, does this ongoing diatribe about posts and center have to do with art?  Art as defined by self or art as defined by what others think.  Art as a way to experience the viewing of the world in a different way or to produce a product for the masses.  The continual push back against those with intentions good or bad to change a style or a technique through education or influence.  And this push becomes all the more important as I enter more into the field of selling my work to the public. 

visit Samantha Byrnes' gallery online...