When I was growing up I was told that art was painting, drawing and sculpting. It was about the gifted few and those we now call gatekeepers, that gave their approval, Art for me now is more about perspective, a way of looking at things and experiencing this world through the eyes and hearts of others. About feeling their experiences and what was important to them. Their day to day lives, their peaks and their troughs. Real people with real emotions, finding a way to express how their world felt to them. This inspires me.

A while ago a person inspired me to find my vision, a style, to push deeper and focus on one thing. I pushed, I strained and then I realised that defining your vision is like defining your accent, It is invisible to you. Rather than leading me to better work it became a blockage. I have realised two very important things, that projects have a look, a style and that helps them work together. The second thing is few artists work on one project at a time, instead we create as we engage in the things that inspire us. The challenge when working on multiple projects is to maintain momentum in individual projects. This is what I have been working on in the last few years, moving away from a greatest hits style to an approach which gives time to making images which are more personal to me. This quote from Ralph Gibson has helped me, I hope it helps you…

“From Dorothea [Lange], I learned about the point of departure. I showed her some of my work, and she said I lacked a point of departure. For example, she said if I carried my camera on a trip to the drug store, I might stumble upon a photograph. If I wandered around on the streets, I might never make any good photographs because I had no point of departure. I never understood this idea until I was working on my book, The Somnambulist, about dreams. Then I knew what she meant. I was looking only for images to use in my book. The point of departure is the backbone of my career. It is essentially how the professional photographer on assignment works. If you are working on an annual report for Chevrolet, you don’t make pictures of Fords! Photographers without points of departure just have boxes of prints.”

I hope you enjoy the galleries, and come back often as these will all continue to grow. I hope it inspires you to work on your own art.

Mike