Here’s the thing, I exist
in, I think in, I work in the extremes. For
me, it takes daily effort – all of the time – to operate in the middle where
most people are; and are comfortable with me.
It doesn’t help that I’m a little bigger than average. Nor does it help that I’m black, an African
American, a person of color, etc. And I,
if I’m not monitoring myself, can be loud – or say nothing at all. Both ways make folks uncomfortable. But I have been managing myself all of my adult
life – I’m in my mid 50s now. Unless you
are like this, you may not be able to really grasp how this is not an easy way
to live.
So, let me narrow in on my
art. As far as what I would like to do
with my life – I just want to be a working artist – predominantly working with
photography. Why working artist? I don’t want to do anything else – employment
wise. But I do have a fulltime non-artist
job so I work on my art as time permits.
I go to non-artist work to help provide for our family. We have kids, my wife and I, and we both
work. That’s good and I love my
family. It’s just the non-artist work
part – I want my job to be an art job, not non-artist work.
So what does that have to
be with being on the extreme? When I do work on my art, I push it. I’m back in the extremes and I am comfortable
working on my art that way. I have
recently joined Instagram and I push my art there too – working on exposure and
learning how to make Instagram work for my art.
When I’m creating, it’s just me in my head so it doesn’t involve anyone
else. But when I’m doing the Instagram
thing and trying to gain exposure, I wonder if I’m pushing too much. I don’t know.
It’s obviously not too much for me but I don’t know if it’s too much for
everyone else – I don’t get that type of feedback from Instagram (at least not
that I’m aware of yet). So, I will back
it off a bit – put that Instagram thing in “the middle where most people are”. Just saying that makes Instagram now feel
like…
Well, I just had to write
this down.
