I thought it’d be a good idea to have a regular segment to this blog and what better way to wrap up the week with looking at some artwork. Every Friday, I plan on examining one of my photographs or pieces of artwork and give some insight into my thought process, any inspiration or stories behind it and possibly a look at ways I went about creating it.

At first I was thinking about going through all my work in some kind of order (probably chronological) but then I thought it’d be good to start with the piece I sold my first print of. It just so happens that this took place only last weekend.

While on a three month road-trip along the east coast of Australia, I became more focused to do something with the artwork I’ve been creating for a number of years now. A friend helped me get in touch with a new gallery that was opening in Camberwell near Melbourne called “Lioli”. The name stands for Love it or leave it. It appealed to me straight away.

I sent them links to my work online and they wrote back to me to say they’d love to have some of my work as part of their opening. When I eventually returned to Melbourne, I got to the task of choosing ten pieces and getting them printed and framed. I have to at this point give a huge thank you to Tony Knight at Manark Printing who helped me immensely with this process. Tony is a very talented photographer himself and clearly has a passion for creating the very best quality of work. He taught me a lot about the process.

I delivered the final prints to the gallery, and I have to say, for a moment I felt a sense of pride. More so than I have with any of my other achievements. A few days later I attended the opening night, which was totally insane. There were so many people there, you couldn’t move. I didn’t stay very long as I was feeling the claustrophobia creep in.

Upon leaving I decided that I wouldn’t react my normal neurotic way where I’d be calling up every five minutes to see if anything had sold and then pacing around wondering why no one had called me back and all the time having a knot in my stomach. I decided to not think about it and get on with normal life. It’s not that I didn’t care, cause I did. I just didn’t want the possibility of rejection and failure to crush me. I’m still not entirely sure if this was a healthy or negative way to react.

So I got on with my life, looking for new projects to work on and dreaming up this website among other things. Then last weekend I got an email from Chris and Jackie at the gallery, stating that a lady had put the piece titled ‘JOTTPOI’ on layby and wanted to know more about it. If it meant anything and what the name stood for.

I could’ve been in trouble as a lot of my work has no pre-thought behind it and just evolves out of me looking at a photo and tinkering with it. Fortunately this particular piece did have meaning and was created for a purpose.

J.O.T.T.P.O.I. – Journey Of The Two Professors Of Imaginality

Basically the image came out of a conversation I had with a friend, Chris Daniels, about creativity and the paths we were taking. He told me about a vision that he had about these spiraling light rays and how it represented creativity. We got into a discussion and came up with a rough diagram that represented how we both journey through the creative process. How at first we are bombarded with constant external input. From experiences we have, people we meet, things we read, TV and films we watch, games we play, etc…

Over time, all of this input comes together and starts swirling around and mixing and intertwining until BOOM! It reaches a critical mass in our minds and explodes into a creative focus like a laser beam. The creative energy that is released then ripples outward in all directions, affecting all that it comes into contact with.

Almost as soon as the conversation had begun, I had visualized this image in my mind, When Chris made a rough sketch on a bit of paper it was identical to what I was seeing. As soon as he left, I jumped on the computer and set about making it into something spectacular. I set the whole thing against a backdrop of deep space with distant nebulae.

All of this took place way back in November of 2005. Since then I’ve shown quite a few people the completed image and a varied amount of interpretations, more so than any other piece I have created. “transformation from mind to body, becoming one with the divine”, “space and time with the threads of life”, “a spacial anomaly like wormhole”. For some reason, everyone likes this one and I am yet to hear any negative feedback. I wish I could say the same for all of my artwork…

I have prints of this and other works on display at the Red Bubble web site where they are also available for sale.

I hope this has given you some insight into this image. I’d love to hear any other interpretations or comments you may have.