Yellow-eyed Junco — Computer Painting by kenne
Art is anything you can do well. Anything you can do with Quality.
— Robert M. Pirsig
Archive for the ‘Robert M. Pirsig’ Tag
Yellow-eyed Junco 2 comments
The Zen Of Visual Imagery — Balancing Passion and Obsession 9 comments
The Zen of Visual Imagery — Image by kenne
I love all facets of making visual imagery, e.g., writing, music, cameras, catching the moment, editing the moment to share my perspective of the experience — I could go on and on. For me, visual imagery is a passion.
In recent years I have been able to spend more time with this love, even getting into digital video and taking on a lot of digital media projects. However, as with any endeavor, doing it full-time can reduce the love affair to being just another relationship — creativity suffers in the relationship and obsession overtakes passion. To maintain a harmonious balance between passion and obsession, I:
- Don’t do what I love full-time.
- Make sure the love is surrounded by other endeavors.
- Surround yourself with passionate people.
By balancing passion with obsession, we can maintain the thrill in the passion. Georgia O’Keeffe had a passion for the desert, but it was her obsession with how to represent it that led to her imagery of bleached bones. One can have a passion for mountain climbing and have a goal of reaching the top, but as Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has written, “To live for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.” Only then will you experience real passion; only then will you indeed be alive.
— kenne
Related articles:
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig) ~ September 26 @ 7pm (pclreads.wordpress.com)
- Auctions: Take a Private Tour of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch House (curbed.com)
