Have you ever gone back into your earliest work as an artist – whether painter, photographer, sculptor, musician, whatever – and been struck by themes, aesthetics, tendencies budding way back then that still inform your mature work?
In 1969 and 1970, back when I was a teenager with no apparent artistic skills, I came across a battered little old camera in the family attic. It was all-manual, of course, and required a handheld meter. It took only black and white pictures. As I discovered when I used it, there were dings in the film advance that left lines scratched into the negatives.
But that was all I had, so I goofed around with it. I went across the street to Ell Pond and shot what grabbed my eye. I took photos of the family pets. And, as the years went by, I forgot about the pictures tucked away in an old stationery box.
Until today. Today I hauled them out, on a whim, and took a look. Huh. These are what I found. Looks like, even then, I was into the textures of nature, asymmetrical framing, light and shadow.
Consider, for example, the album of photos I’ve recently done, studying sand ripples at Crane’s Beach, and the images in a new album of the beach itself. Some of my cat and horse pictures rise (I hope) beyond family-snapshot level to something more.
And it was all there, the seeds of it, all there way back when I was a fumbling beginner.
Is it the same for you? Or have you gone in completely different and unexpected directions over time?