I read a really great article today with an interview of photographer Ryan Muirhead. His work is dramatic and compelling and I’m sorry that I am just now discovering it. But I am also inspired and privileged to be just now discovering it too.
In this interview, Muirhead says “The real breakthroughs come when you explore questions like what do you really wish your life looked like? What are you terrified of? What do you wish you had the means to resolve in your life but are too afraid to admit? Why is this your work? What are your pictures saying, and is that what you want them to be saying?” And on a day where I did some considerable work on my business and its plan and how it fits in with my life in the next few years, these questions are way relevant to ask.
Then he went on to say “Why art? I think it’s because we are living and existing in a sphere where complete answers are impossible. Where, despite everything we’ve received from science, religion, or life experience, you will run into something where the only available answer is ‘we don’t know.’ Art so aggressively addresses that, either directly or indirectly…[so] Why do we make art? Because we don’t have the answers, and art is abstract enough to not say ‘this is the answer.’ It honors the questions. Great art explores the questions. Like, why do we keep trying?”
A lot to process if you really think about it. Well my challenge to you this fine hump day, is to ask yourself some of those questions and more importantly, to be okay if some of the answers are ‘I don’t know.’ You might not be an artist, but you are a human and there is so much craft to develop in that. The education in life never ends, especially when you continue to ask yourself valuable questions like these. Like really, why do we keep trying?
PINME
Self portrait, 2013
