Artist Statement

I was asked to provide an artist statement for a blog and I decided to do so via my blog, blogger to blogger so to speak.

The will to create never leaves you, but if it doesn't find an outlet, it can fester.

I'm in my late thirties and recently I underwent a sort of identity crisis. Not a full blown break, but more like a creeping depression and deep frustration, that no matter how hard I tried to be a good guy, it would just find a nasty way out, and the fact it started to be, as time passed, more and more common, that I realized something was festering.

I came upon a situation, where I felt that most of my hours were spent in something, that although has its own merits, I could honestly say that it felt meaningless to me at some very deep level. That is not to say the work itself is meaningless, but rather that my heart isn't in it.

After recovering emotionally from this realization, a question came: If not this, then what would be meaningful to me?

And the question might as well been asked in an empty space, as I could give myself no straight answer, as to what would be more meaningful to me....years of trying to do what was "right" had left me with little notion of what I would actually prefer to do....and this evoked a slowly churning journey into insight, one that I can't say I've resolved yet, but that I've made progress.

During this process, I thought back to all the different ideas I've had in the past of things I might have wanted to do at some point or another, and these had been very varied, so I came to realize, that although I have a variety of interests, in all of them I saw myself in a creative capacity. With this insight I realized, that the will to create had been there all the time, in all of these urges, urges that I had for the most part ignored.

Photography for me became one of the most readily available outlets for these creative urges, as I had taken pictures throughout my adult life but without the intention of making a craft out of it. Once I started to lean into it though, it quickly became something I could dedicate hours of my time without a second thought, an action that prompted experimentation and exploration.

Not saying that it has created instant happiness, because my life is riddled with most of the same issues as before, but I feel a calm inside that I didn't feel before, a calm that replaced the creeping frustration....an alignment of sorts, produced by being truthful to yourself. Even though I still work full time at my other job, leaning into photography in my spare time with intention has achieved this calm.

I've had some side steps though, I almost veered into a side of photography that was appealing because of the economic potential that it represented, but my insides quickly twisted, the calm faded and I quickly became frustrated again...so as I explore my creative side, this calm/frustration thermostat seems to be a good guide.

I know Artists Statements usually include a well versed and polished version of one's art, aesthetics and vision, but Photography for me has been the venue through which I started to explore this side of myself, a journey to self discovery so to speak, so consequently when asked to make a statement about my art, introspection is at the forefront.

Similarly, my approach in photography follows similar lines. I wasn't sure at first what kind of photographer I was, so I decided to explore the images that called me to take photographs of them. When I saw something interesting, I put the camera to my eye, frequently without a specific plan or vision, and explored said image through the lens and let my gut be the guide. After doing this frequently, I started to feel certain common threads in my photographs, but whenever I tried to start a picture with a common thread first, rather than through a naturally provoked curiosity, my emotional thermostat would appreciate the resulting image as stale.

Besides introspection and self discovery, which is the main driver for my craft, I can say I'm very visually inclined, I like shapes, colors, textures, orientations, layouts and the limits these have to each other. I feel that common background elements of our everyday life make for the best subjects to experiment the limits of these qualities with, by having no iconic or unique scenes distracting my eye, I can freely explore the different visual arrangements that everyday life gives us. As such my images tend to omit iconic elements such as people, sunrises, sunsets, roses, etc. elements that have a lot of predefined meanings, that I often find distracting. Objects that evoke no predefined way of capturing them are my favorites, a display window, a crack in a wall or the corner of a portal, are all scenes I enjoy exploring, both with my camera and later in post production.

So my resulting process at this time, involves putting myself, at least once a week, in random everyday environments, walking around to allow my curiosity to be naturally stimulated, following it and exploring where it leads me, playing with the visual elements I discover, guided by an intuitive/emotional thermostat, that has resisted so far to be rationalized into a more specific style or process.

After I finish with my photographs, I reflect on them in specific and the process in general, committing myself to write about it in this blog each week.

Andres Gonzalez