Uncharted, Once More — Into the Digital Unknown

 

Another Sunday, another reckoning with whatever imaginative wind has blown this week.

Creative currents have swept me into unfamiliar territory. For better or worse, this has always been my temperament. Experiment and learn. Take risks. Wander into unmapped terrain. Refuse to stay fixed on the same route simply because it is known, profitable, and comfortable.

This time it is video that calls—street photography woven into motion, and AI animation that produces short clips which can be spliced together into something resembling a film. A moving collage. A dream stitched frame by frame.

I have rudimentary skills—enough to splice images together, add sound, create transitions. Over the years I’ve made more than one hundred short videos that live on YouTube, quietly gathering viewers and subscribers. That alone once felt daring. 

Short clip of an outing in Oaxaca. About 2.5 minutes.

But recently there has been a dive into deeper water.

Using a sophisticated creation and editing software called Runway, with a prompt and a photograph, it can generate short animated clips—moments that breathe, faces that turn, streets that flicker into motion. It feels a bit like alchemy.

Half the time, the first attempt misses the mark, the second veers into absurdity and the third surprises me. I fumble with settings. watch tutorials, mutter. Then, generate, discard, regenerate. Gradually, fragments accumulate. And eventually, there is enough material to assemble an intriguing short film.

Short clip of Vincent Van Gogh. About 2 minutes.

It is both thrilling and humbling.

Why do this?

Because it is deeply satisfying to sit in the director’s seat from start to finish—and also be the author. To imagine something that did not exist, and then coax it into being. To orchestrate image, motion, rhythm, and sound. There is a childlike delight in it. A sense of play mixed with stubborn determination.

Yet, a feeling of quiet guilt.

My other loves—painting, photography, writing, have been faithful companions spanning decades. Am I abandoning them for a shiny new fascination? They are never far away. In truth, they flow into this new work. The eye trained as a photographer guides the frame and uses an image to begin. The painter thinks in light, color and shadow. The writer shapes the prompt, searches for tone, listens for story.

Still, there are moments when I feel in water over my head. The technology is already dense and advances faster than I can absorb it. Menus, tools, timelines—so many levers and switches. At seventy-three, one could reasonably decide to simplify. To consolidate. To refine what is already mastered and stay in a niche.

But that has not been my way.

I am still willing to be a beginner. Still willing to look foolish. Still willing to wrestle with something difficult simply because it calls to me.

There is joy in grappling. Joy in not knowing and in watching a small competence slowly grow. The process is awkward, sometimes maddening—but alive.

Perhaps that is the real current I am following.

Not video. Not AI. Not even art in a particular form.

But the current of becoming.

Circling Back: Double Exposure as a Way of Seeing

Recently, a circling back occurred. Like a migrating bird—sometimes flying thousands of miles to return to a place of beginning—I found myself back at a place of discovery, years after first passing through it. Certain ways of seeing never leave us; they wait patiently for our attention.

My fascination with photography began in art college as a side pursuit, then receded as I committed to painting. The camera returned later—first to document my work, then quickly as a way of making art itself. Travel intensified the bond, and street photography became a passion. Equipment improved as the curiosity deepened.

Early on, while working with models in my studio, a mistake changed everything. In 2004, an unadvanced frame produced an unintended overlap—a happy accident. The images were dreamlike, resistant to easy labels, and charged with meaning. I remember the small thrill of recognition, the feeling that something generous and alive had entered the room, asking only that I allow it.

Historically, double exposure did not begin as an artistic strategy. In the early days of film photography, failing to advance the film caused two images to share a single frame. What appeared to be an error soon revealed expressive potential, and photographers began to use the technique intentionally. Two famous men in particular come to mind; Man Ray,  (American/French; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) and Jerry Uelsmann, (American, June 11, 1934 – April 4, 2022).

At its core, double exposure allows two moments, spaces, or ideas to coexist. Rather than replacing one another, they merge—sometimes harmoniously, sometimes in tension. This is what draws me to the form. My work has long circled themes of memory, interior life, time, and the porous boundary between inner and outer worlds. Double exposure feels less like a trick and more like a visual philosophy, rooted in curiosity and wonder. The images feel like surrealist poems.

Ultimately, double exposure is less about technique than perception. It mirrors lived experience itself: layered, overlapping, incomplete. Past and present, figure and environment, thought and sensation—none exist in isolation. Double exposure makes that condition visible.

Many years passed while my creative energy flowed into other forms—painting, writing, design, graphics—while photography remained a steady undercurrent. Now, like migrating birds returning to a remembered place of sustenance and joy, I find myself once again in the quiet magic of double exposure. It feels timeless—less a return than a reunion.

For the time being.

The Long Practice

For the time being, I have stopped painting.

For more than forty years, painting has defined my existence. It has been my daily discipline, my way of understanding the world, my place of inquiry and refuge. There have been brief interruptions—periods of extended travel when photography took precedence, or moments when life delivered a blow so heavy it was impossible to lift a brush to canvas. When my oldest daughter died, painting simply fell away. There was no decision involved. It was just gone.

Recently, the pause has come for different reasons.

Many hours have been spent writing—especially completing my travel memoir, The Weight of Air. (Available now by donation—here)  The memoir is largely taken from posts found here, in My Fairy-Tale Life. In 2008 I went around the world for one year and lived in 25 countries. Along with me came my paints and camera. 

The writing demanded a different kind of attention, one that left little room for paint. At the same time, I found myself uncertain about what to paint. Not how, but what. The familiar urgency wasn’t there, and forcing it felt dishonest.

In the meantime, ideas did not disappear. They simply shifted direction.

There has been photography—new work, still unfolding. There have been final revisions to the memoir, shaping it into an e-book, letting it take its own form. Poetry has crept in quietly. And lately, something unexpected has emerged: a new series built from old ground.

Over decades, I accumulated hundreds of figure drawings. They were never meant as finished works—mostly studies, explorations, moments of attention. Mostly female forms, some male. They lived in drawers, folders, and eventually in digital archives. I rarely looked back at them.

Now I have.

Using these drawings as a foundation, I’ve begun combining them digitally with photographs of graffiti, walls, weathered surfaces, and street textures gathered from years of wandering across cities and countries. The figures—intimate, vulnerable, inward—meet the marks of public space: abrasion, repetition, accident, history. The collision has produced something neither source could accomplish alone.

The results have surprised me.

They feel less like paintings and more like conversations—between past and present, private and public, line and scar. Some figures sit, wait, turn inward. Others lean, stretch, confront. They are not heroic. They are human. They exist within surfaces that have already lived a life.

This way of working suits where I am right now. My temperament has always been to follow an idea when it arrives, even if it runs counter to previous directions. Perhaps it’s the adventurer’s impulse—one I’ve written about before. I’ve learned to trust it.

I don’t know when paint and canvas will call again. For now, attention has simply moved elsewhere, and that feels honest. This pause isn’t absence or loss; it’s another way of listening. The work continues, just not in the way it once did. And for the moment, that feels right.

A Breeze Causes a Stir

One dark night not long ago, we scooped a tan, medium sized dog up off the streets and made her part of our family. She arrived with an open heart and an eagerness to belong, as though she had been waiting for someone to say, All right then, come in—you’re home now. We named her Brisa, which in Spanish means Breeze.

Of course, we knew nothing of her past, so our first concern was her health. A veterinarian from our village came by and gave her a couple of injections to ease the pain in her injured foot and ankle. Soon after, we took her into the city for a full checkup, vaccinations, and to have her sterilized.

That was when we were told she had already been spayed.

This came as a surprise. We had inspected her ourselves and found no sign of it, but the veterinarian felt what seemed to be a scar—although slightly higher on her abdomen than expected. Relieved, and more than a little grateful, we took Brisa back home, believing the matter settled.

Then, about a week later, it happened.

Small drops of blood appeared on the floor in a trail. We checked both dogs for injuries—nothing. Brisa, meanwhile, was licking herself and being her usual affectionate self.

It slowly dawned on us.

Brisa was in heat.

We had no idea we weren’t just rescuing a dog, but welcoming a princess—one whose arrival would summon admirers from every corner of the neighborhood.

Our household was instantly thrown into a kind of quiet, frantic disarray. It is a good thing we don’t have wall-to-wall white carpets! Our floors are Saltillo tile, which means they can be mopped—and so they are. About thirty times a day.

There were other complications. A neighbor’s dog, Oso, lives on our property, and he became very attentive to Brisa’s new condition. So did several other dogs, who began showing up outside our fence whenever we took her out on a leash for her business. This was a new arrangement. Before, she wandered our property freely, alongside Mali—and Oso.


She has shown a little curiosity about the other dogs, though she’s gone toward the fence, as if she is wanting engagement. She is not quite ready yet. Oso tried mounting her once, and she snapped at him sharply, as if to say, "Not so fast, mister!" But we can sense what’s coming. Soon enough, she will be wanting to be, as the old song goes, “where the boys are.”

A couple of days ago, a particularly determined neighbor dog made it through the barrier, resulting in a fierce and noisy altercation with Oso. I feared the worst for the other dog—and dreaded having to explain it to the vecinos. To separate them, I had to employ the large wooden staff I now carry. And this—all before Brisa has even reached the most intense stage of her cycle.

Apparently, the whole affair lasts about three weeks.
Ughhh.

Still, every time I look at her—tail wagging, eyes bright, heart wide open—my own heart responds in kind. Like her tail, it starts thumping all on its own. We remind ourselves that all things pass, even the messy and inconvenient ones, and that soon enough we’ll find a good clinic and get this little chapter of chaos resolved.

In the meantime, we mop, we watch, and we laugh when we can. Brisa, blissfully unaware of the trouble she has stirred up, simply continues being Brisa—sweet, loving, and very much at home.