I'm like the painter with his nose to the canvas, fussing over details. Gazing from a distance, the reader sees the big picture.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I look at everything in an artistic way.
Many photographers feel their client is the subject. My client is a woman in Kansas who reads Vogue. I'm trying to intrigue, stimulate, feed her. My responsibility is to the reader. The severe portrait that is not the greatest joy in the world to the subject may be enormously interesting to the reader.
I try not to picture a reader when I'm writing. It's like trying to make a great table but not picturing anybody sitting at it.
We paint a slow picture. You can see the brushstrokes. We don't get to the point, and sometimes when we do, our readers don't notice, in fact. It's so couched in nuance, it can fly right over a person's head. 'What was that you said? I couldn't quite make it out.'
To some extent, I draw on what I see around me; in other places, I imagine what I write.
I have always wanted to make paintings that are impossible to walk past, paintings that grab and hold your attention. The more you look at them, the more satisfying they become for the viewer. The more time you give to the painting, the more you get back.
I write on a visual canvas, 'seeing' a scene in my thoughts before translating it into language, so I'm a visual junkie.
In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.
I write what I see; I paint what I am.
I crave to be able to photograph the way a painter paints - in a loose, expressive way.