WHERE THE EYE GOES

The car goes. It’s an old racer’s saying, but it works for art too.

Are you doing the same thing over and over again? In Henning Mankell’s Wallander mysteries, the main character’s father is an artist who paints the same scene, over and over again. Okay, sometimes there’s a grouse and sometimes there isn’t. Are you doing the same thing over and over again, grouse optional?

Think about where your eye is going. It’s what the eye sees that the hand paints. If you do nothing, but paint flowers then you’ll get really, really good at painting flowers, but be lost when it comes to camels.

If not camels, what about emus, or people or cars or motorcycles, it’s what the eye sees…

Are you looking, really looking? There is so much to see on the coast that the eye overloads.

I live out on Cape Arago and drive by the Bar every day or two. It’s never the same. Give it two minute’s difference and the whole scene changes. Sometimes it’s all blue, sometimes gray, sometimes gold, there are so many variations that if you did nothing but take one photograph a day, you could fill your portfolio with different images.

There’s the surf breaking over the jetty or the sun setting against the horizon, the guys clamming in the morning or the storms rolling in in the evening, even the fire trucks sitting or racing to an emergency, there’s a never ending array of wonderful images, but only if you allow your eye to see.

And you never know when a chance to use what you see will come along. There are two shows this year which want images not usually captured by the local art community, lighthouses and motorcycles.

I come from Texas where light house is what you do at the holidays in December, so lighthouses are still pretty new to me. I never get tired of looking at them and thinking about what they meant to the history of this area and what they do for the sea faring community and of course they look pretty cool. I even took a picture of a lighthouse back in Texas. It was Lighthouse Public Storage, but it was a lighthouse.

What about motorcycles? Does that make you think of Marlon Brando and Eric Von Zipper? (You did too watch the Beach Party movies with Frankie and Annette. Eric Von Zipper was the bad guy, remember?) Does it make you think of wild hairy guys riding their bikes down the center of town raising all sorts of civil disobedience? Get serious. The days of outlaw motorcycle gangs have long gone. The average cost of a Harley is about what a three-bedroom house cost in 1970. You think Hell’s Angels can afford that, maybe Hell’s Junior Partners or Hell’s Stockbrokers? Don’t even get me started on what it costs to own an Indian Chief.

But if you look at the bikes, they are amazing works of modern art. (So are some of the BOBs but that’s another story.) And when you get a middle-aged guy seriously in love with his bike it will outshine the most ambitious starlet. Are you looking?

It’s in the EYE. Where are you looking?