Home is Where the Art Is

The first night I saw the reflection of the Japanese maple tree down below on the bedroom wall I knew it had to be used in a photo. This night image is the first of now three photographs done here, with a few more in mind. This house I live in now a year and some inspires me so much that a photographer friend informed me he thinks I should move because I enjoy being here too much and hardly ever want to go anywhere. It's also been said by sages that one doesn't have to travel half the way around the world to find one's Self. I've been in both situations...Staying home doesn't cost as much. I do notice though, that as a visual artist, I tend to go into a heightened state of awareness when places aren't familiar. That's why traveling is so seductive, such a high. A shift takes place, newness glows, visual epiphanes abound!!! Click.Click.Clickclickclickclick....So, anyway, I'm staying home a lot getting high behind the lens just looking around where I live, getting especially fixated on the Japanese maple during autumn when every day you think it couldn't possibly get any more red, and then the next day it is pulsatingly red...red red. For some reason this environment keeps me in that altered state (no drugs, I swear) much of the time. I really sound like a bliss bunny, I suppose, but visual stimulation is my obsession. Luckily, it doesn't take much to "click" in, so to speak. Just staying present in the moment as I look around, absorbing the simplicity of the light, the shadows, the reflections play between objects, all the manifestation of this world we live in...what a play! What a joy. I'm so glad cameras were invented. Someday maybe photographers will just implant a flash card into our eye and all we' ll have to do is wink to make an image .... downloading is another story.