A funny thing happened when I started reading fiction last December: I wanted to work with photographs again. Creative pathways came unstuck. Good fiction paints vivid word-pictures much like a photographer builds an image. I started looking through and processing all the photographs from the October's Boston/Shenandoah trip. I sent off six old 35mm rolls to get developed. I started carrying my Nikon FE around.

And then I started getting really into it. I bought the Mamiya C220, a Pentax Digital Spotmeter and started shooting medium format. I am deep into sensitometry in Ansel Adams’ Book 2. I went all academic with this pursuit.

This is how I overthink. I will get impatient soon, then burn out! I’ve done it before with other interests.

Incidentally my enthusiasm to purchase novels far surpasses my conviction to read them all. Ian McEwan’s The Children Act is next in a long queue of unread books. I am one page into it and it is already working.

From the first time I saw Simon Stalenhag's work, I was stuck by a rare sense of wonder. It was a special flavor of wonder that seemed familiar at first but I could not place where I had tasted it before.

Simon Stalenhag's paintings transport me into a world that makes me desperate to know the story. I find myself scrolling hungrily through his tumblr feed looking to tie the collections of posts together into one cohesive story.

Where did those machines come from?
How did they get there?
Did we make them?
Why are some rusting away?
The people seem pretty used to them. How long have they been there?

The creative freshness seamlessly juxtaposed in our known world is a feat of brilliance that I can only admire, envy even. I am forever impressed by the ability of some artists to draw up an impression of reality that pulls the carpet from underneath the feet of my analytical brain. I am left with only feeling grateful for having discovered their work.

The 1970's and 1980's era automobiles in the otherwise modern period stir an old nostalgia that other kinds of art do not. As a child of the 80's, I grew up reading books and magazines portraying that era of vehicles.

I immersed myself into the paintings today to investigate that hungry feeling. In scrolling through Stalenhag's tumblr page, I discovered that the hungry feeling is akin to being a child and discovering new things every day. That childish curiosity and sense of wonder is reignited easily as I try to normalize the realistic image of a world that I could have never imagined myself and am now discovering for the first time.

I keep scrolling till I get to the very end.