HOLD STILL

This place is the beat of my heart
- R.E.M.

Luck is not chance—
It’s Toil—
Fortune’s expensive smile
Is earned—

- Emily Dickinson

-

Sally Mann's Art Work is easily my most dog-eared and underlined book. A resource I find myself returning to, again and again. I seek out her directness to put me in place and on path. 

“The hardest part of making a photograph is lifting the camera to my face”

Sally is perhaps best known for her evocative and resonant landscape work in the American South and intimate portraits of her family. Her guiding philosophy is that a creative life demands relentless hard work, discipline and grit, not fleeting bursts of inspiration or so-called talent. Rather than separating the act of creating from daily life, Mann argues that art is the overflow of deeply experiencing life: family and connection to the land, with place as her enduring subject. The life you lead is your art. The art you make is your life.

“To be great, you have to disappear”

Choosing to live, work and raise a family from Lexington, Virginia, far from the spoils of city life, she believes that removal has given her the space and time to create beyond visibility.

“Disappearing made me less vulnerable (if not great)… So, double bolt that mythically bulging door, send away all the art-world impresarios and agents, do not succumb to jealousy or study the auction results, go back into your studio, sit at your desk, make your work, and ruthlessly toss out whatever isn't good enough, for whatever reason. Do that for the next twenty-five years."

As an artist, you are a sensitive filament picking up unique frequencies and making the work they evoke. And if you are lucky, when that work is released, it will find untingled nerve endings out in the world and lustily tingle them, manifesting indelible truths in which someone will one day find beauty. That is our job.

Below, home. Where I disappear to create.