It is one of the great observable truths of the human condition that we struggle constantly to align our internal world to the external world or align the external world to our internal world. We push and pull on these things, wiggle and squirm, build up and burn down, often with disastrous consequences, largely because, I think, these two ideas have very little to do with each other. Which is not to say that the external world invalidates our internal world, or that the way things work in our head trump the mechanics of the world around us. This is simply to point out the discrepancy, to focus, for a moment, our thoughts on space between our eyeballs and brains. As far as the external world is concerned, in that space sits clusters of finely tuned, highly evolved optical nerves, capable of interpreting chaotically confusing photonic blasts into signals that tell us things like distance, shape, color, and a myriad of other more complex ideas. In my internal world, however, that small distance between the physical intersection of the world and my body and my actual brain, the seat of my thought, houses the most human attribute of all. Imagination.



I was listening to an episode of Radio Lab recently, in which Robert and Jad do a brief thought exercise. Simply put, Robert asks Jad to imagine a canary, but to color it purple, give it a red racing stripe and polka dots. He then points out that, though Jad has successfully conjured a mental image, no such creature exists. No animal matching that description lives anywhere in the cosmos, to the best of our knowledge. But we can imagine that it might. And therein, I think, lies the secret to humanities great successes on Earth, and to the suffering we find it so easy to experience in life. We can imagine many beautiful things, take them apart and look at their imaginary pieces, put them back together and make them run, and none of this time, energy, feeling, or joy corresponds to anything outside of our own heads. Therein, for me, lies the desire to be an artist. To find some way to communicate those things, bring those visions to life. To close the Gap of Imagination a little. I now think of myself as an artist. It has become an internal definition that I use when that inevitable question of, “Who or what is Zach?” comes up.



“Oh, he’s an artist living in such and such…”



And to be clear, defining myself as an artist is obviously not a complete definition. Being an artist doesn’t successfully describe many things about me, like how or what I eat, my bathroom habits, the way I lay in bed, or the kinds of breakfast cereal I might prefer. It does not successfully describe my relationship with my fiance or my parents. But it is efficient. It’s a mission statement. It’s an internal measurement, like a life thermometer, and it has a certain number of external values that go with it.



This is where the frustrations that Chris Oatley mentions in his latest blog post, Desire vs. Frustration, come in. What happens when your internal definition, though admittedly shorthand, isn’t supported by your external circumstances? This is what leads me to say things like, “I do such and such during the day, but I’m really an artist/illustrator/comic creator.”



And then, I am led to ask the question, “But is that true? Am I REALLY REALLY an artist/illustrator/comic creator? My circumstances don’t match my description of myself.”



And there’s the rub. I’m looking down the road at the American economy, at the things I’ve committed to get out of life that nothing to do with being an artist, and recognize the very real possibility that the external world may never align itself to my internal world. That feeling sits inside me with the firm belief that I sure as shit will not compromise my internal world to match the external world. So where does that leave me?



In the very same set of shoes as thousands of others, I suspect. Millions. Well, billions, technically. With that supremely human ability to see things that aren’t there, to believe things that aren’t true, in the strictest sense.



I have, as do billions of others, that oft debated human capacity, choice. I’m not really interested in getting into the subject of free will just at the moment, because the important part, to me, is feeling ownership of your behavior, whatever causes your behavior. And I think you’d be hard pressed to say truthfully something other than that, whether or not we actually make choices, life certainly feels like we make choices.



My choice concerns the realization that the main difference between my internal world and the external world, for me, doesn’t lie in other peoples behaviors or the mechanics of the universe, but, in fact, lies in how I behave. So, I choose to behave differently. I choose to evolve. I choose to alter not my internal world nor the external world, but the Gap of Imagination.



This weekend I did it by choosing to attempt to draw and paint something I’ve never done before. I want some environmental art in my portfolio. I want experience with limited color palettes. I want to get better at perspective. There’s a ton of great reference and research, blogs and books out there for all of these things. But none of them do you any good if you don’t try it.



This is my main lesson from this painting, the one that has slowly sunk in after the past several days. I think it was good NOT to put in the research, just to take what I know and go for it, all out. Because now I have this (not very good) painting. But the thing that this (not very good) painting IS very good at is showing me where to put in my research, how to make it really count. It’s really good at showing me, in an image, in a succinct story, what I know and what I don’t. Some very helpful critiques from friends and collaborators have really highlighted where I should spend some time learning.



Looking at the image below, the values in the background are WAY to similar. I need to spend some time studying atmospheric perspective. It’s important to note that it works differently at night than during the day. The composition is wonky, thrown off by the hard line down the middle, created by using two point perspective too simply. It was a good experiment with the limited color palette and the perspective, but you can’t let a limited color palette limit your value palette, and you can’t let perspective be more important than composition. Both good lessons for me. Also, it’s messy. I clearly have to learn a lot/shore up my process in regards to producing digital things quickly. There’s a lot of ways Photoshop can help you move faster, and I need to learn a few of them.



Anyway, if you have additional insights or critiques, I more than welcome them and really appreciate you taking the time to look.







All this is to say, though, just do it. There will likely never be a time when your internal world and external world line up perfectly and create a life full of ease and happiness for you. People are just inherently too creative for that. But the thing that’s malleable, that fits into that Gap of Imagination, is you. Yourself. Your person and persona.



History, I think, if you could know it all, would look like a millipede, each leg one of millions of aborted futures, and the body not a straight line of progress, but a segmented, undulating series of curvatures, the average of which is progress, though not through any logical forward motion. And history, like a millipede, stinks when you squish it. I say these things to remind myself that history is messy, success is the realm of future, and being an artist is just part of now. And the only opportunity you’ll ever really have to start bending and stretching and spanning the gap is now.