mistakes

This blog has always been as much about the process as about the pictures .... my process anyway.  How would I understand anything else, or anyone else's process?  I just know and try to know a little about how I try to make pictures.

What do I know?  I know I like to make mistakes, and I know I like to make them by myself.  All the varnishing I do today came from an utterly absurd mistake I once made......the paper and the print looked just so stupid with the wet varnish all over and through .....you could almost see right through to the other side.  Everyone knows that varnish is supposed to sit on the surface of the art....but to soak right through the paper ???   This was truly absurd, a definite failure of a try.

But, I was going away to Budapest, and instead of tossing the print in the dumpster, I left it home and I let it dry.  When I came back from my trip a month later, it had dried out, and it was looking wonderful, so I decided to keep doing this crazy varnish "through the paper".  Last summer the print that was that first mistake raised some money for the Falmouth Hospital and I was happy.

It is hard enough to make a mistake by myself.  I barely have the courage to do that.  I don't have the courage to make a mistake with someone else looking over my shoulder, or, fixing my mistakes for me.  And if that someone is extraordinary, then I surely do not have the courage to make a mistake.  This I know.

I also know that if I do not make mistakes I will not grow.  If I do not grow, I do not think I will be any good to anyone.  Not to myself, and not to anyone else.

If the only way to make mistakes is to be alone, then so be it.

Of course no one is truly alone;  I know I am not alone, even if I seem to do my best to drive people away.  There are a lot of people behind this image.  You can't see them, but they are there....... some day I will write out a list.