The Biggest Barrier to Creativity!

Dec 30, 2021

Below are previous members of the new series that doesn't yet have a name. Creativity is funny that way--once in a while it's a faucet of ideas that overflows all at once, flooding mental bandwidth so I have to write notes to myself to keep track of it all. But more often it's hard work to puzzle it out one step at a time. Yes, creativity can be tedious too:

Here's one last example! And as it was made prior to any of these, it just may have been the very first inkling of the series to come. In other words, "Twisted Braids" below might be the first spark of inspiration that led to the others. 

I'd just taken off from the Jackson Hole Airport heading southwest to Afton, Wyoming. Looking down I saw a tortured river of braids. Turning the controls over to Paul I picked up my ever-ready camera to shoot the Snake! That was in 2013. The image lived on a CF card and percolated at back of mind for almost a decade to a time when I was moving away from photography and back to my first love of painting. And now you see what emerged from thinking of the river not as a river but as a braid, as an abstraction--recognizable but very different. And as beautiful as the real scene had been, as much mental investment as there always is in piloting an airplane, this painting is even better at conveying that moment of awe in seeing what geology and physics created.