Un-Still Life

Right up front, I'll admit, I've been lazy this past week. I've put off my artwork in favor of other less worthy things like yard work, cleaning house, that paying job I go to 5 days a week. I know, I know, I shouldn't let those oddly simple things get in between me and my art, but it happens. Consequently I've scrounged around looking for something, ANYTHING, to inspire you.

I found myself falling back on looking at the score of digital photographs I have stored at various locations on just about every computer I it at in a months time span. I see a pattern, it's mostly of those every day things around me that captivate my lens. Beta in a Bowl with Peace Lillies sprouting out from the top. The cats lounging around watching me mill about, waiting for kitty treats or affection. Or around holidays, family doing all the normal Norman Rockwell kind of things that families do, such as try to sneak food off the table, shake gifts in an attempt to guess the contents, you know the drill.

All of this "normal stuff" seems to rarely find its way into the museums and galleries that surround us. They find their way into the average picture album, the Sunday Times, various magazines, and more. Rather the things that we see develop through time by looking at the galleries and museums are images more like the outsiders of society, the people the common person never gets to see, and places we will never visit. However while this isn't necessarily abnormal, where is our history of the normal? Where is our catalog of everyday images that we relate to without even thinking about it?

So your exercise for this week is to search through the family albums to find that shot that you inadvertently took but haven't discarded. It's usually hiding in the back of that album you rarely open or it's sitting on a disk that you haven't deleted and haven't completely gone through yet.

At the pre-request of my wife to not place her face all over the internet I'll not show the image I want to here. It is a picture of her asleep on the couch with one of the dogs on her lap and a cat trying to occupy the same territory. This may or may not be typical but for anyone who has dogs and cats you probably experienced this at one time or another. It's a genuine image un-doctored and un-posed.

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