24 January 2024
Discovery is not a straight line. At least, in my life it is not.
Deviation for a purpose:
Many years ago my dad needed help with his tax returns. Unfortunately (for me) I was not asked to assist when things were still in smooth running order, but only after a few years of unopened warnings were discovered (in the days of snail mail). I was "dumped" into the deep end and spent a miserably large amount of time trying to find missing official documents and making phone calls to strangers who were committed to do their due dilligence, but who was not called to do mine. Here I must confess that this period was not my chirpiest of times, but I am a learner. LEARNER in capital letters. During this unsatisfactory long time period compressed between goverment officials and my father's advanced ailing memory and lost forms, I eventually realised that "you don't know what you don't know" and so you can't get answers because you can't ask questions about that which you don't know. But we got through it, because I applied a locked jaw on finding a solution. The discovery process to a penalty free tax return is not straight forward. Nope. It was not.
But that is not my focus, I am not back on track with my art discovery to apply my theory that "you don't know what you don't know". So very often I need to apply lock-jaw perseverance and grit to find the solutions I don't know about. In essence I made many mistakes and rerouted and retried different ways in order to improve my techniques.
The artwork displayed together with this blog was a huge turning point. I had the original work printed in a fairly large size as a gift for someone. According to my own digital calculations it was supposed to come out beautifully, but it ended up being blurry and of a disatisfactory quality. I had to go back on my thinking tracks to find out where I made my mistake. On finding the answer to my unintentional blunder, I had to face a news set of decisions on how to fuse my then current knowledge with new technological information without spending an inordinate amout of money. Eventually I was satisfied with a pleasing outcome.
Now, before I get all hoity toity about it, I realise that the ongoing discovery is still out there ... and i don't know what i don't know, but it makes my art-journey challenging, exciting and satisfactory.