T w i s t e d:

cause to rotate around something that remains stationary; distorted, buckled, warped, deviant, depraved, aberrant, corrupt, debased, disturbed.

OR:  an act of turning something so that it moves in relation to something that remains stationary (which might be more relevant to the image).

Photoshop is an environment that allows me to make as many choices as I like.  The history palette, the blending modes and the opacity tool presents me with an unlimited amount of changes and more importantly, the freedom to move about in any way without regret.   There are no mistakes that can’t be changed, allowing me to exist in a place of complete playfulness.  This is how my creative spirit has learned to thrive.  There is no place or need for self-judgment or criticism that oftentimes inhibited me from opening up to my creative spirit.

This piece was selected for an Alternative Photographic show in SOHO.  It was twisted in how I chose to create it, twisted in how I had to shift my approach from the forgivable Photoshop to the mostly unforgivable image transfer process and twisted in how I needed to trust my choices.  I worked on seven pieces at once, using parts of my photographs.

With Twisted I chose to challenge myself with a serious set of boundaries.  My challenge was to create a piece that looked like my other work, somewhat transparent with many layers.  However, the only tools I had were gel medium, my printed photographs and a piece of sandpaper to “erase” what I didn’t want.  I had no history tool, blending mode or opacity slider to use if I changed my mind, just the ability to add another layer of information on top of the one I had.  Each piece had to be placed carefully without anticipation to what would be next.  I took it one step at a time, stopping the mental process of erasing or blending or forgiving.  It’s exactly what some painters and certainly watercolorists do.

Everything in the way I have been working for eleven years had to stop and I felt twisted in my perception and decisions on how to move forward.

For me, the power of Photoshop has taught me how to free myself from self-judgments and criticism that might stop me in my tracks.  It has taught me to stay in complete playfulness and acceptance and without learning this I may never have moved through Twisted successfully, quite an accomplishment for a software program.  Perhaps my forty years of meditation and yoga played a small part as well.