Wont' Somebody, Please, Save This World? ©2011 Merrilyn Romen.
Blackbird. ©2011 Merrilyn Romen
When I was raising my children, I asked myself the question most artists inevitably ask themselves: am I really an artist or am I just a pretender, just another imitator with no real voice of my own. It disturbed me so much that I quit designing altogether (I had been a graphic designer for the previous 8 years). I immersed myself in my children, sewing them dresses, quilts, decorating their rooms, designing my new backyard into a proper English garden and sketching out concepts for picture frames that I could use for the many photographs I took of them and finally designing dinnerware and teasets for them to play with. You see where I’m going with them. Being an artist isn’t something you choose to become, you one day realize that you just art….. often for worse than better. Artists are rarely rich. In fact, the average photographer in the U.S. makes $20,000/year! Lord knows what the average painter or illustrator makes. But once you realize that you have the ability to turn something mundane into something beautiful, it’s like a drug and it is definitely addictiv
I had thought of going to medical school after college, but my degree in filmmaking didn’t lend itself to immediate admission so I would have had to taken more science and math pre-requisites in order to apply and, well, my parents had had enough of supporting my somewhat bohemian lifestyle so I passed. I often wonder if I would have lasted in medical school or even in being a doctor. Would I have sewn my own uniforms to keep from going crazy?
And speaking of crazy, I was going to apply to become a psychotherapist when I was going through my identity crisis after my children were born. But, truthfully, the only thing that keeps me from going crazy is doing what comes naturally to me…..creating. I am a bit cranky and frustrating when I’m not able to create something. It might be as simple as making an apple pie or sewing curtains for my room (note to self: get on it!), but the act of creation – for me – is not optional.
And so, when I heard that one of my favorite photographers, Natalie Dybisz aka Miss Aniela, was coming to town from London to teach a seminar with my other favorite photographer – the self-taught incredibly prolific Brooke Shaden, I grabbed my credit card and signed up for a day of complete immersion in my natural life force of creative photography. And what a wonderful day it was. We posed, we conferred, we shared ideas and we went for sushi at the end of the day. And I found Natalie to be entirely wise beyond her years and profoundly intuitive. (Brooke and she have been collaborating on images during Natalie’s stay in America and they both showed their work at LAPhoto in Santa Monica this week. Even Brad Pitt was seen looking at their work!)
So here are the images I created that marvelous day with my two fave 20 something mentors. I feel another image coming upon me as a toy store asked me to post something in their store. The mind boggles!
