Wednesday, October 15, 2008

do you see? no. you don't.

First, have a look at this image. It's some of my artwork:
I created this from a shot of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland that I took this past summer. At first I began to play with the image but after a bit, I started to work towards a specific look that I will tell you in a moment.

What came of this image is something really interesting because it really illustrates the difference between how my world looks and how "normal" people see it, purely because of the different filters that they are seeing through.

On printing this out to full size (the image links to a much bigger version so you can see the details a bit better) I started to show it to co-workers and friends to see what they thought about it, how they liked it, the usual fishing for compliments and possible commissions and the like.

That's when I noticed a very strange thing that happened. Out of the 30 or so people that I talked to or that dropped by my workspace and saw the art, only one towards the end saw the work for what it was. The entire rest of them commented about how the image looked like I had painted it. 

It was the second to last one, a woman I sort of knew who nailed it and I really think that it is because she is depressed too although working here, everyone is so good at hiding anything like that so you'd never guess.

She looked at it and then turned to me and said "It's like I'm looking at the water through tears." She walked away and I sat there stunned. She was right.

What an amazing thing to have some one see what you see. But even more amazing and also making me so sad is the fact that so many others will never see it.

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