Staring into the Void
I’m Brad Carr, and I write open and emotive creative essays about life, light, and landscape. I also run group Nature photography workshops, creative retreats, and I am available for private tuition and mentoring.
The past few weeks have been strange in my world. With my exhibition at Plas Glyn y Weddw coming to an end, I noticed some thoughts and feelings arise that I really wasn’t ready for.
I have been thinking a lot about my future—questioning whether the path that I am on is the right one for me. I have even entertained thoughts (once again) of selling my camera and lenses and turning my hand to something completely different. The thought of being pigeon-holed into an identity many times along this path has been frightening to my soul.
The truth is, I have needed something new to focus on; something bigger than myself. For many years, my lens has been turned inwards—sometimes, perhaps, obsessively. I think I have been, at times, in real danger of driving myself to insanity by trying to understand everything that happened in my early life. This has, no doubt, been an essential chapter in my life’s journey. I have made peace with the childhood events that once caused me so much pain and confusion. I have found the home that I have long been searching for here inside myself. But one must decide when enough is enough.
The collective journey that we are on, as far as I have understood it so far, is the one towards acceptance. This beautiful excavation of my internal landscape has helped me to uncover that precious, peaceful place. Perhaps it is, however, that being in this place of acceptance has, ironically, caused me further confusion at times.
One of the key issues we face on the path towards healing is with the identity that we form around it. It has become trendy to be ‘healing’. We have to be wary that this healing can quickly become our latest addiction. Addiction is rooted in ego, and the ego loves to identify. We must be careful not to enter a self-imposed prison of identity.
I have seen this potential mirrored in my creative work. What happens when a person builds an entire portfolio around pain, grief, and healing, and finds some level of artistic success with that? The danger is that one’s art then becomes the prison, and isn’t that the opposite of what we pursue artistic expression for?
With this awareness, I found myself staring, once again, into the void, unsure of who I am and who I want to be; unsure of where my path might lead next; unsure, at times, of whether the path that I was on was even the right one in the first place. What on earth do I do next with my creativity? I have wondered. My friend said it right when I confided in him recently, ‘What if you are the art now!’ He graciously reminded me. The reward of the artist’s journey, I remembered, is not in the art itself, but in who he becomes through the creative process and who he then gets to be in the world.
Upon recent reflection, I know that the work I am here to do is much deeper than simply equipping people with skills to navigate their cameras. Truth be told, I have known it deep down for many years. I have had this intuition that photography is just a vehicle towards the place of presence that makes my deepest and most meaningful work possible. With my keen interest in psychology, I have felt drawn to this field of work for many years. Recent encounters on a youth engagement workshop project have confirmed to me that that is where I truly belong; doing some of the ‘deeper’ work with people who want to better understand themselves and learn how to articulate their thoughts and communicate their feelings using creative mediums.
There is an endless well of wisdom inside of me—one that I have accessed more of through my recent internal excavations. I feel a deep longing to share this wisdom because I know that it can help many, many people who, too, are searching for their own place of peace and deepest purpose and long to create a better life for themselves. It brought me the deepest sense of fulfilment to see other people come to their own realisations and find a place of deeper self-understanding and awareness over the course of the workshop project. These interactions helped me to realise that the stresses and struggles of my own seven-year creative cycle have been well worth it.
How then, I have been busy asking, do I get myself into a position where a) what I have to share is heard and respected on a wider scale, and b) it is received by the masses of people who need a deeper awareness and understanding of their inner worlds of thoughts and feelings which, to my mind, is everyone on this planet to some degree. These are not straightforward questions, I am sure you’ll agree.
As I sit here writing this, once again, in the void of the unknown, I am comfortable in knowing that I have been here before. I find further comfort in knowing that the questions swirling in my mind are now, at least, questions about the future and not uncomfortable questions about my past. These are new questions for me to find answers to as I continue to follow my intuition into the void.
The most beautiful thing about my artist’s journey is that I know who I am now. More importantly, I know who I am not. The next chapter of my life, I feel with increasing strength, is about helping other people come to that same place of awareness within themselves.
Thank you for finding the time to read this essay. Did you take anything valuable from my words? I would love to know if so. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me in the comments section.
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