Art is such a precious thing, and never before has the world been so supportive of artists as it is today. Not that this makes it any easier for individual artists to make a living through their art, but overall, the diversity of art that supported by human endeavors has grown to unimaginable complexity, with people creating art in ways never before imagined by our cave painting ancestors, and with higher percentage of people making a living through art than ever before, I'd imagine.
It makes for one hell of a show, and I'm glad to have a pretty good seat. I've been lucky in life, spending quite a bit of time floating free, without the usual constraints on time that prevent creative people from making and reveling in art. At age twenty I read Thoreau and snapped out of a major layer of the programming, deciding that I would rather have time to enjoy life than be bound to working all the time for the financial rewards and security that come with developing a career. Instead I made a career out of adventuring and exploring, which didn't ever pay, but which went hand in hand with a life of endless artistic pursuits. Because I gave myself the gift of time, art has flowed through my life, and I have felt far richer than I might have been had I gone a different course.
I coined the term Eclectia as a genre of art, for interdisciplinary artists who dabble in a variety of media and who don't really fit into any one category. This is definitely true for me, and I'm glad to have steemit as a platform to throw some of my eclectic art from over the years out there for the world to see. I have been accumulating so much content, in the form of fiction, photography, poetry, music, and philosophy, that I used think I'd never be able to do anything with it all. Now that I have a canvas like this, I can splash creativity in all directions, and it doesn't all have to fit together into some perfectly lined up bigger picture.
Of course, I'm hoping that certain themes will emerge, and that my creative pursuits can serve some higher purpose, like serving as a reminder to remember the sacred, or helping to inspire actions that will lead to the creation a better world.
And so it begins. The easiest place for me to start is with photography, which I already have fairly well categorized. I have a good collection of nature photography, as well as huge collection of urban photography. I will also publish galleries on permaculture, ecovillage life, farm and homestead life, and unschooling, all themes that have emerged from my lifelong journey into Eclectia. I hope you enjoy!
