Why bother?

Those are dangerous, words with which to open any venture, artistic or otherwise. Dangerous but necessary, as without an underscoring of doubt, what ground does certainty stand to gain? 

In asking fundamental questions, in this first post, I'm trying to establish the both the validity and trajectory of this blog. Why inflict more words upon the world? What do I hope to achieve with this blog? and What might you stand to gain from reading it? 

As an artist, I value critical reflection, openness, and above all, insight.  

I struggle with words. The endless eddies of possible linguistic permutations offer a fearsome prospect, but what seas were charted from land alone? 

I appreciate the clarity and economy of thought gained by attempts to communicate, much as you can't explain what you haven't understood (Feynman), it's through attempting to explain that we can better understand.

In the Early 20th Century, the Slade bore, austerely, as it's motto, 'Drawing is the explanation of form.' Among the many other things that drawing is or can be, It's an invitation to understanding, a restless, searching understanding, and an invitation that's hard to refuse.

Words offer the potential to pinpoint specific things, which in a picture might not be wholly apparent, questions wrestled with in the making of a picture can be brought to light: What's the significance of this material? What relevance does it have to its subject? What determines the size of the picture?, What qualities, if any, were actively being pursued?

More than a thousand words, a picture is worth a thousand choices. Many are often implicit and insulated from consideration having been enshrined in a working method inherited wholesale, or assembled intuitively over a lifetimes worth of experience. 

It's just such choices; the questions encountered in the production of pictures which this blog hopes to reveal. In an attempt to make the daily internal narrative a little more accountable, in pursuit of clarity, to seize on ideas and events as they occur, and to contribute and communicate, with countless curious others. Such then are the aims of this blog at the outset. I might put the odd picture up too.