One step forward...

Four weeks out from the creative shift, and another four from when we began the October road trip with its month of foggy skies that followed. That makes four weeks left to make my mark before getting swept back away until spring.

And so ends the free flow of searching out and experimenting, and so begins the hammer and nail work of creating the collection from the ground zero and making sure everything is neat and trim by the time New Years rolls around.

Crazy. Compared to my original vision, I could not have imagined a more alternative scenario:)

Turning point

Until a couple hours ago, it felt like today had been laboriously, and painfully, unfruitful. Ten hours between Daddy duties, and not a pixel was sticking. In a self-defeating moment there, I even began to question whether I've confused tunnel vision with being blind.

But then, one never knows when inspiration will come knocking:)

In some midnight moment of divine intervention, the visual path that has eluded me has become suddenly illuminated under exclamation marks that finally provide some type of visual clarity.

However that path continues from here, at least an overall direction is definitely beginning to appear, and with it a new voice, and new language I've only begun to learn. It's been no easy feat connecting old dots with new tools and techniques, but after tonight, I feel more and more actually capable of such a radical departure.

The question, as always, is where it will go from here.

Plan X

The new direction I have begun to take on the road from Plan A has become a Rubik's cube of possibilities that are inspiring as they are intimidating and humbling.

Feeling enlightened one day and in the dark the next, my creative compass moves between what appears to be a straight path to the new collection, and totally unexplored territories far off any personal map.

Surprising even myself, I have put down the mouse and picked up the paint brushes, pencils and crayons of my childhood, and resigned my camera as a tool to simply capture, for a world in which I feel far more propelled to create.

Reconciling ability with ambition, however, is no easy feat when at the bottom of a new learning curve, and made even trickier while trying to connect them to a personal style I have spent years defining and refining.

(Combined on top of my usual Daddy duties and running StarBright, it's no wonder why I haven't seen my pillow before 2:00 am since we got back home almost three weeks ago!)

Where exactly it will go from here is still a bit of a mystery. What I do know, however, is that I have opened a door that I'm not sure I can ever totally close. Both my perceptions and expectations have changed and I have no doubt that the evolution will be for the better.

Back to the Future:)

The idea of turning October's misfortune into something completely different than what was planned, has definitely turned me on.

I'm imagining Picasso, Monet, and Dali happily lost in the woods of Algonquin, drinking Svarak, and German wheat ales. Alone, together, and inspired to capture the gravity of Fall. But just before the party gets started! Nick Night suddenly appears with a couple acrobats and starts smoking a little weed:)

All lenses and brushes fully exposed.

Oh so good to be back to where the new wind blows:)

To Fall, or not to Fall?

As always, it seems like time is moving faster than I. More has happened since my last entry here than I can remember, let alone recount, but Lora astounds me every day and makes me want to live life to the fullest. I'm amazed at how little means so much, and how much can seem so little.

Home has been a pretty long plane ride from work for a good six of the last ten months, as I flip the double-edged sword that both gives and takes from my family. While together, we  have camped under wild skies among bears and wolves, and spent mornings on pause, inventing stories about zebras and monsters while we roast leaves on imaginary fires to warm infinite tiny fingers.

Above all commercial gain, and all artistic expression, it should be said that those little zebras and fires of fatherhood are the masterpieces of life that no art can fully imitate. Of this, I finally understand, and resign.

Regretfully, I truly wish I made more time to record all the steps in between... but then again I suppose there should be little to complain about that when life is has than the container that I can fill it with.

On a personal, more creative note, it has been almost one month since I took the phone out of my clients' hooks to pursue a new Autumn Collection, but the clouds persists, as do the green leaves that show no sense of time.

Either I will get lucky with a new forecast before time runs out, or I will be forced to move in other directions... which may ultimately find something deeper than what I was originally looking for.