The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.  The poet, musician, artist continues throughout life to contact this child, the self who knows how to play.  Improvisation, as playful experiment, is the recovery in each of us of the savage mind, our original child mind.  Full blown artistic creativity takes place when a trained and skilled grown-up is able to tap the source of clear, unbroken play-consciousness of the small child within.  This consciousness has a particular feel and flow we instinctively recognize.  It is like "tossing a ball on swift-flowing water; moment to moment non-stop flow."    A girl riding a bike discovers that the secret of effortless control is balance—continuous adjustment of continuous change.  When she reaches the point of shouting, "Look, Ma, no hands!" she has learned that she can use less and less means to control greater and greater power.  She has learned to encounter and consciously play with rhythm, timing, weight, balance, geometry, right, and left handed coordination.  She does this by herself, from her own body. The emotions attendant on such a discovery are fear, delight, pride, disbelief, elation, and a desire to try it again and again.  This is what classically trained musicians feel when they discover they can play without a score.  The work may hold a lot of tension, a lot of soul, but it is utterly simple while incredibly powerful, godlike play. —Stephen Nachmanovitch

If you have hung around in this gallery with me for a fair amount of time then you know by now that I often travel deep into the night seeking to discover a portrait of someone I've never met.  Last night contained such an adventure, the result of which is hanging above. For the past several years I write non-fiction content for a living.  I also work on fictional stories.  One of my primary inspirations for working with this medium is the generation of visual representations of characters from my tales.  Upon the walls where I write are many portraits which serve as creative stimulus within my writing process.  This is a portrait which I have just hung upon the wall. Some of you may wonder why I do not designate such a work as this as Mixed Medium.  My view is that if the Genre is a portrait and the primary foundation of that portrait was generated in Poser, to which I am adding only digital refinements, the work is not truly a mixed medium.  All of my post work is done in Photoshop using a combination of brushes, filters and layer blending.  Everything from start to finish is a blending of pixels.  An artist who works in 2D material or produces and image with a camera, scans that original work, and then continues to evolve the creative process with digital tools is working in mixed medium.  This is not meant as a definition .. it is merely a personal perspective upon my own process. I hope you are enjoying a creative adventure of your own! With warmth, Terry