blank pages....

Ansel Adams on color
Originally uploaded by kevindooley

I once majored in Photography. It was one of my many ambitious goals. I never completed my studies but I learned enough about photography to really understand and enjoy it. I especially loved the development process, the smell of the chemicals, taking a pure white, shiny piece of paper and watching it change bit by bit into a work of art. I feel the same about painting, sketching and writing! It is so fun to take something ordinary and change it into something magnificent, if not magnificent than at least creative.

In my art history class, it was assigned to take an impressionist art and try to figure out the meaning behind it. It was the same with my poetry class. We would have to take these great poems and dissect it line by line and sometimes word by word. To me, it took out the enjoyment of it. I do enjoy being able to understand a good poem, but I feel that ultimately some art is meant to be perceived by the viewer solely to their understanding. That's what makes a piece of art great, that it can change meaning depending on the viewer.

Dissect it too much and you end up with the blank piece of paper that they started with.