Message from Ellsworth Weaver
Artist’s Statement:
An artist, like Jacob, must wrestle with his own angel. From that conflict we all emerge wounded to some extent. It is that wound that gives our art character. Angelic wounds never completely heal.
My primary tools are the camera and the computer/printer. With the camera I do my best to capture clearly focused light rebounding joyfully from what I call beauty. With my computer and printer, I con-fuse the light - sometimes separating it, sometimes melding it – to achieve what resonates within me. As an added garnish, I try to tell a small story with the title and subtext.
What is beautiful? I find beauty in the feminine. It is my nature and my cultural training. I photograph women.
I call my art “Vagabond” for it is mobile and perhaps not to be trusted. It begs, borrows, and steals that which nourishes and comforts. It drops what is too heavy to carry further.
I was a soldier. I fought in Viet Nam (1970-71) less than a month after I was first married. When I returned I had changed. My heart was closed. I had been involved with dropping fire and chemicals on people. I had seized the stone dagger and tried to kill the force of love within me, as the “Story of the Moonstone” says.
Although the war is far behind me, almost every day I am reminded of it. It may be something in the sound of gunfire outside my window at work (security guards training) or the smell of barbeque pits (I did mix and drop napalm) or even just the sound of helicopter blades in the morning air and I am suddenly back in combat. My stomach lurches, I get nervous in crowds. Usual stuff for those who have been through such without dying. I am not a special case. We in America manufacture such walking-wounded everyday. *sigh*
Now I am exchanging the stone dagger (combat) for the flute (my computer and camera) and looking for the moonstone (salvation, annihilation, getting off the wheel of birth-death-rebirth) between the breasts of beautiful women.
Maybe this is all just bullshit to justify what I do. Hope it is amusing bullshit, my friends. Certainly it cannot be worse than the angelic wounds I carry with me: I helped kill men, women, and children by burning them to death; and that I survived when many of my friends did not. My daughter once said to me (this was during a peace march we were on), "Daddy, I am glad I did not know you when you were in the Army." I replied, "Honey, I am glad, too."
Peace,
Ellsworth Weaver
I am a Gold Member of One Model Place (#155304).http://www.onemodelplace.com/member.cfm?P_ID=155304
I am listed at Model Mayhem (# 92517)http://www.modelmayhem.com/member.php?id=92517
Member of Community Zoehttp://www.communityzoe.com/
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