I Can Relate

by Alfred Stieglitz

The Art of Looking at Images

When I teach I often encourage my students to go through all their magazines before they toss em to recycling. Take a gander quickly through each page....when they stop, rip it out!
To collect images that make them think or laugh, smile, tear up or just go oh!
To recognize the feeling and emotion of the image they gathered.
I feel images are better when they create a feeling with the viewers.
Doesn't matter what as long as you successfully identify with some feeling.
A good self assignment as an artist is to write a list of emotions and illustrate
the feeling as it is to you. Test out the art on your friends to see if your accurately communicating.
I like both of these images.
I identify with both women for one is sensual and full of wild possibility.
Snake and girl makes me smile with all her oddness and sense of style and demeanor as if she was walking a dog not a snake.
She is cool and getting her groove on.
For me the snake is a totem of transformation and its a new year for me with the Burning Man Temple burn and I am moving all my energy into art to express my gratitude for my gifts.
Abundance is back and Joan of Arc has my back.
No need for a diatribe.
Do you like it or not?
Why?
What does it make you feel?
Bottom line end of the day its how things make you feel not only other people but tune into art at large and your world can be expanded in the most playful honest way.
Volunteer to take children you know to the Museum's.
The last show I took a kid to was a Robert Rauschenberg show in Soho.
Children have an innocent unhindered point of view usually, seeing all kinds of things.
A child's eye can be most inspiring.
Thankful that my Spirit can ebbe and flow with basic ether.

photographer unknown