Duality in vision
Common advice for small businesses is to realllllly narrow down your focus area. Like, super narrow. BUT if my business is art and art is a reflection of my person, wouldn't I want to expand that? My art is a living, breathing entity (bear with my metaphors) that cannot and should not be limited. Those of you who have been with me for awhile here probably have noticed that my oil paintings evoke a very different feeling than my watercolors. I paint these two bodies of work when I'm in different states of mind, or rather when I'm celebrating flip sides of life. When I paint watercolors I am bright, and light and have a great peace within me. When I paint oils I'm going into a cave so dark that it is illuminated only by chance strokes guided by intuition. This is why you often see the theme of a narrowed tunnel in my large works.
Reading about duality in vision sparked a memory from my art class sophomore year, when we experimented with stereoscopic drawings. I remember struggling to reconcile the flat sketch on paper with the 3D illusion I was trying to create, and how the instructor kept emphasizing that our eyes and brain were constantly negotiating two perspectives at once. That lesson stuck with me because it mirrored the idea that we perceive the world through both literal and interpretive lenses. A few months ago I tried a photography project that forced me to shoot the same scene in black‑and‑white and color, then compare the emotional impact of each. The contrast was striking: the monochrome emphasized texture and form, while the color brought…