"art does not represent things falsely, but truly as they appear to mankind."

- Rusking, Stones of Venice: The Fall, Ch.2



With the purpose of fostering intellectual, personal, and creative growth, I've been consciously working on familiarization with my own internal mental processing. Once you know what is forever a part of you, with the right amount of will, you can work with or around that to arrive at something miraculous.

It's astounding the associations you make as a child and carry with you - my most positive memories are those from whence I was discovering something new or learning how to do something new, how to create something beautiful, how to simplify a monotonous process. Additionally, exploring the unfamiliar was (and still is) one of my favorite pasttimes. I think it's so important to remember what came to us naturally as children, for this all took place during a time when we had had minimal exposure to society's mores which are forever with us now and influence our every decision whether we like it or not. Our talents as children are our talents now, and what we should be cultivating, if only in our spare time.

As an adult, it's easy to get caught up in other less fulfilling parts of your life, especially whilst working and simply trying to please everyone. With work, social lives, school, obligations, I think other things seem to have to take priority, pushing other things to the wayside. I believe the challenge and the goal in professional life is to function as an integral part of society doing what you loved to do as a child.

I've been challenging myself to step up my game as an artist/designer by doing much of the following - I think your abilities can be improved by a) garnering as much knowledge as possible b) as stated earlier, really, truly figuring yourself out so you can be honest with yourself in your work c) knowing your priorities d) having experience to draw from e) establishing legitimacy with relation to the rest of society, because, let's face it, without it, you won't get anywhere.

recording
reading
research
brainstorming
thinking
observing
experiencing
exploring
experimenting

Some brainstorming I was doing on my walk home that I quickly jotted down upon getting home: