MARKS

 

They always cause me to pause. Marks on walls, pavement, and transit, all have something to say. I try to imagine art from them. How they were left there, could I use the renderings to paint. My camera comes out and there you have it. Another mark to pull at your wandering mind, to imagine, maybe create. 

Perhaps it’s the randomness of them, how they break the perfectness of what is strived for in modernism and cities. All the while knowing they are the marks of our lives coming and going. Some are painted over, only to be marked again. Some aspire to a street art of their own, where intentions overcome the wildness. 

I take the photographs home, play with them, get frustrated at times by what I thought I saw and didn’t. Still trying to pull the art from the mark. Sorting them out till one or two speak above the rest. Staying in my mind until art becomes….

Art Note: William Klein, the great street and fashion photographer who recently died was the first to paint film contact sheets (exhibit “Painted Contact Sheets”). An excellent article on his life is “William Klein, the life of a non conformist photographer” by Sophie Bernard in Blind Magazine