Some mornings l wake up with the urge to draw something- anything– and I’m not satisfied until I’ve done just that. The subject matter doesn’t seem to be important, though it does help if it piques my interest in one way or another.

I try to avoid the obvious. I look for metaphors and back doors, and other ways in. Mostly, I have an allergy to those things that are common and cliché and have nothing interesting to say to me. I want  something to beckon me in, to make me (or anyone else) ask, What’s that about? What does it mean? How can I know more? . . . . Why? 

When you can engage the imagination you can engage the person; you make them think;  you make them curious.

More importantly, you become curious yourself!

In the end, I suppose that’s what it’s about as artists: exploring something that interests us. Finding something new in the commonplace; a different view, twist, or wrinkle, that in some way, is uniquely our own. A perspective that we can claim for a second or two; one that we haven’t had before or visited recently, and then to surprise ourselves with our own discovery. To find that what we thought we found wasn’t what it was all along, and it isn’t exactly what we had hoped to find, but now that it’s been found- and we’ve laid our hands upon it for a moment- it is just what we were looking for!

Maybe it’s something that nobody else even remotely sees, cares about, or understands.

Maybe we don’t understand it either.

That’s okay! Maybe the idea is not ready for sharing. Maybe it’s small. It usually is.

Sometimes it’s just a few random, meaningless lines on the paper that suggest something that can’t quite be discerned, but they have feeling, so they become a seed for a flower with no name to be fed, watered, and to shed light upon later.

There’s something there! You’ve captured it. Examine it. Then let it go and see where it leads you.

Self Discovery? Oh, I suppose that’s part of it. Artistic Vision? Okay. But the terms are common and miserably over-used . . . they mean too many things until they mean nothing.

Does it even need a name?

How bout we call it . . . Butterfly Net!  

Just Butterfly Net.

Has anyone seen my Butterfly Net?

I set it up right here in the corner and . . .

Ahhh . . . . there it is!

Let’s see what we can find today!