The Camera is an Artist Painter’s Brush is a Pizza

This morning, after bleary-eye-opening-where’s-the-beef-I-mean-coffee, I read through some of the replies to my last blog post where a friend of mine commented upon the fact I’ve purchased yet another camera

“What does this one do different except empty out your bank account?” she laughed-questioned-counted-her-carefully-cultivated-pennies at me.

This one makes pizza, I texted back.

And the fact is, it actually does.

I know, I know. You all on your keto-diet still think this is a ridiculous assumption, and even if it did make pizza wouldn’t it be healthier if it spit out the hind-legs-once-plated-called-more-delicately, venison.

Perhaps your vision of art is more protein, and mine, empty calories, yet at the end of the day we both get what we want, and I have the double chin to prove it.

But getting back to camera gear. Or more accurate, how the camera is an artist’s paintbrush making pizza.

We have to go back in time a bit. When for whatever reason I equated ultimate artistic expression to paintings hanging on a wall in a museum. Us Westerners are taught early that the greatest gift we can give Mama is a scrawled crayon picture depicting the perfect nuclear family that she proudly displays with the help of a magnet on the refrigerator door. Perhaps on the island of Tikiwiki someplace in Michener’s exotic Far Far (where the hell is it?) East, my doppelgänger runs from the seashore with seashells he put in a grass woven bowl in some sort of artful arrangement that Papa puts on the dinner table to complement the squiggly sashimi dinner offerings waiting to jump into mouths.

The fact is, we all have an idea of what art is. And to create art we have to have of course the vision and then the instruments to express that vision.

So back in the day I wanted to be a painter because I had all these colorful Cubist visions and I did what any reasonable Visioner would do. I bought canvas in every size available. I bought oil paints based upon the font used to describe the colors within and the logo if it looked Da Vinci enough. And I grabbed brushes. Lord, did I ever grab those brushes.

I deduced this simple equation. Blank canvas, mix up some colors, dab the brush into the swirl and then apply until the Annunciation of Pizza was revealed.

Still Life with Pizza

I thought I could be Michel-Jay-Alo quite easily because I’d already done the hard part, picking out sable instead of synthetic. Imagine some docent leading school kids to my masterpiece, Venus Baking Clamshells at the Beach, and saying in her whisper stage voice, “This! Is! Raphaeljayalo’s succinct! Did I say! Succinct! Masterpiece!” (My second painting after the much less stellar effort, Gummy Bear 4 Color Triptych in the Manner of Warhol)

The kids of course are snickering over the badly balanced boobs of Venus sans nipples that the Mothers Millions Who Have No Feelings organization had painted over with (to wit) gummy bear behinds— the kids just want sugar after seeing my ass(pirations).

Here’s the thing. For the most part the artists who paint need brushes and there are thousands of variations of brushes that basically brush. Some do it with a zig and others do it with a zag and many zig and zag. The artist glams on to the ones that make She/He/It feel their expression of vision is best achieved. At the end of the day a brush is a brush is a brush until of course the brush becomes a hardened blackened unusable stub because the artists’ gone on to fluffier brushes, their little gossamer strands held to the wood wand by shiner golden crowns.

This is no different for the photographer. The ‘art’ is in our head. The camera is the brush that transforms that vision into a prism what others can see, and in the case of my art, much of it is food based around empty calories.

So back in the day (a different day, but still back) I had pizza in Italy with Roberto who tolerated me for about 8 years of life together. Of course I wanted my favorite pie. Pineapple and Ham. Roberto had his chance that night to ditch me. But for some reason he had a brush in his hand that quivered with possibility. So after twenty five minute Italian conversation consultation that involved lots of waving of hands and cursing and the evil eye directed at me from the pizza chef, delivered to our table was a pie with chunks of pig artfully pirouetting on top of daffodil slices of pineapple.

Those days I had one of the early iterations of the iPhone and a Sony camera that laughably now was as large as a trade paperback edition of War and Peace. It’s the brushes I’d chosen to capture the visions of sugarplums in my head.

My friend yesterday asked me, “Are you daft? iPhones R all U need. Why spend money on something you’ll never use?”

The true answer is, yes, I’m a little not-all-there. I’m still picking up those brushes to see what they can maybe do different. To imagine they can make me a better authentic style Jay.

Now back to why we are really having this conversation today. You tell me. Wouldn’t you rather a partner who was equal parts sweet and savory like that improbable concoction of pineapple and ham?

Or do you want an anchovy in red sauce as your husband?