Laura Nalesnik - MouseWhiskers Studio

At 55, I am definitely on the artist’s journey. I love it! I love trying to find a great red, to see a shadow cast just so on the ground, to have great light when I’m painting, and to try and capture that. I love having colors make my mouth water. I am a cancer survivor, and each day I can pick up a pencil or boot up photoshop is a blessing I don’t take for granted. It makes those colors that much more vibrant.

The path to finding that essential “truth”, artistic and personal, and trying to capture that, is not a smooth one, but it sure is interesting! Working with other women artists, older and younger than myself has been very revealing. Seeing others on their own journey helps you recognize your own path a little better. It seems that we are all spokes on the creative wheel, looking at things from slightly different points, but moving forward quite nicely. Collaboration is a beautiful thing.

For me, going to that deep place that the Spirit speaks from, the creative core, is intimidating, a task I can avoid at the drop of a hat. It’s also the reason I get out of bed in the morning and still want to be an artist when I grow up. It’s scary to walk that path, to know your own truth and not turn away, but getting to the heart of it becomes the journey in, and the journey out.

About a year ago, I had a hard drive crash. I was able to retrieve most everything. But it got me thinking.

1. Buy a backup hard drive. Now. Use it.
2. If all I have left of a painting I created in Photoshop is a nice print, have I lost the important part of that work?

The last one really kept me up at night.

If an artist creates a work in paint, clay, pencil, whatever, that itself is the work of art, the finished piece.
You can make copies of it, print it, photograph it, but the work itself is the real deal.
Something is real when you can hold it in your hands, look at it in the round, sniff it, touch it. Right?

Even though my drive had crashed, and the work was gone, I still had the print. If I had created it in an analog fashion, that’s all I would have had anyway. Why was I freaking out? It sure felt like I had lost the work.

For a digital artist, what is “real”?
When does “real’ occur?

Is it real in your imagination before you ever put it down to draw it?
Is it the file in the computer, always alive and ready to be updated?
Is it real when you print it out?
Is it real when the file is finally viewed, online, or as a print? Does it take interaction for any work to be truly real?

It feels that while the piece is still in the machine, that it is incubating, always gestating. When it’s printed, it’s just a moment, but not all of them.

But it also feels like “in the computer” is kind of like ‘in a dream” . It’s an external repository for the imagination. But to quote The Matrix, “there is no spoon”.

But now, I back it up.