How I Saw the World Changed

Recently I’ve been struggling to make sense of my creative path. I’ve been feeling more and more stifled in a way that was hard to recognize—as most things are as they crept on us over days, months and years. Lately I’ve been feeling more clear about this, having noted that I felt like I’d been forcing myself into a derivative vision of those I’ve been looking up to, and rather than seek inspiration from them, I’ve been focused on creating a version of what they are already doing. There’s a difference between role models as guide posts, setting out on our own path inspired by them and doing a version of what somebody else is already doing.

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I just finished watching Leaning into the Wind, a documentary film about artist Andy Goldsworthy. His bio on Wikipedia called him a “sculptor, photographer and environmentalist who produces site-specific sculptures and land art situated in natural and urban settings”. That seems somewhat accurate from my understanding, but it doesn’t explain what he’s really doing, which, from my perspective, is amplifying what’s already happening around him in the world, through a deep understanding that only stillness can bring. Finishing this film, it struck me that I no longer look at the world this way, at least not in my creative pursuits.

A number of years ago, I finally felt that I was ready to learn about art. I had studied sports, rap music, menswear, some photography and finally I was ready for art. My father is an artist, and so I stopped drawing at an early age, intimidated by how good his napkin doodles were. That feeling of being self-conscious about art lasted a couple of decades. However once I finally dove in, I fell in love with a lot of the mid-century modern artists and especially Robert Irwin. To this day I would say that he’s my favourite artist, but contemporaries like Donald Judd, Robert Smithson, Walter De Maria, James Turrell, David Hockney, Isamu Noguchi and several other multi-disciplinary artists spoke to me. While the artwork had to have some aesthetic appeal, it was the way in which these artists looked at the world that was so inspiring. They seemed to possess a combination of child-like curiosity and an innate optimism about the potential of the unknown, combined with the way they harnessed and brought attention to what was already happening in nature. For me, this was not unlike a surfer, trail runner or skier.

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This documentary re-opened my mind to what is possible again. Over the last few years as I’ve studied almost exclusively self-help, mindfulness, holistic health and the subconscious, I left art behind. I’ve joked about selling off my collection of art books several times, but apparently I kept them for a reason. As I write this, I feel excited about what I might discover, what connections I might make and what roads that may lead me down in the future, without attachment to any sort of outcome. One of the most beautiful aspects of Goldsworthy’s work, is his lack of attachment, combined with his playful curiosity. He might lay in the street while it’s raining to reveal a dry outline of his body, or coat his hands in flower petals only to watch them wash down a stream, or he might re-organize twigs of a certain color to completely enlighten the way you look at a landscape. His perception of environment is so finely tuned, it’s like we’re seeing quintessential mindfulness through him. The way that he subtly manipulates nature, whether working with flower petals, colored stones, branches or clay, he manages to transform our perception of the environment. We’re seeing what he originally saw, just in a new way that we’re not desensitized to.

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It’s much like the way Robert Irwin’s later work evolved to inspired you to look at the same world you’ve been looking at with a richer perspective. And I did. Reading Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees changed the way I not only looked at the world, but how I created within it. Art had become a key canon for inspiring new ideas, connections and ways of communicating and over the last few years the client-work I’ve had as continued to shut down that way of thinking, leading me to almost solely use Instagram for “inspiration.” I almost feel ashamed. I do feel ashamed. But that is the beauty of awareness. Once we become aware, we have the power of choice to do something about it. And so it’s time to open up some of my art books, open up my mind and step onto a richer path than I’ve known, and see where it goes with some of the optimism a much younger Ryan might have had as he crawled his way through the hedge in my back yard five feet above the ground.