Yesterday I spent a couple of hours photographing art work for Ruth Sauer, an artist and teacher who runs the North Main Gallery in Salem, Virginia. She had a few year’s of art undocumented and I set up in her place and photographed painting after painting to give her digital copies to submit to other galleries and art shows. All in all, I took nearly 300 photographs.

It was a joy taking the pictures, and seeing how her art has changed and how she has experimented over the past decade or so. It was a lesson in how life changes how we see, and in the joy of experimenting. I watched her art evolve from dark places after her husband died a few years ago, to monochromatic experiments, to her current work which is exuberant and bright with color.

I’ve seen the same thing in my own work, whether that work is poetry, photographs or art. I had lost my creative way several years ago, and a vital part of my coming back to myself meant shaking off the rust of time and beginning anew with my writing and drawing, and refocusing on my photography. Reading and looking at my work, I see the same kind of progression in what I have created. Not that every item I write or make reflects the moment I am in, but there are trends I see that reflect trends in my own life – the dark time of divorce, the depression, the slow journey back to myself, the leap of faith in moving to Vermont, the joy of my daughter coming to live with me up here, the adventure of love. All of it is reflected in the work I have done.

A few months, part of that adventure has been taking art classes. I piggybacked onto Rona’s taking art classes early this year, not because I felt an urge to learn to pain, as she did, but more to share something with her. In doing it though, I’ve experimented with color, something I have never been particularly good at. And I have seen my style evolve from the highly detailed drawings that I did for decades to very impressionistic painting, where color sets a mood more than shows a thing.

I did not charge Ruth for the photography. She’s a friend now as well as my teacher. But she gave me something far more valuable than a few dollars. She gave me my favorite picture of the ones I photographed yesterday. (That’s it shown above.). And even more than that, she’s given me a new chapter in my creativity, through her class and providing a safe place to experiment and find a new side of my artistic voice. (some examples are scattered in the picture from my studio, below.).

To say I have been well compensated is an understatement.

Tom