Bizarre Horizons

Hidden away in cyberspace is one of the many blogs I've created over the years.  Though I've dropped most of them, I can't let go of Bizarre Horizons.  I keep changing its purpose.  Up until now, I've kept it a fairly private blog, using it more as a place to squirrel away ideas and to keep track of projects that I don't think I'll get to anytime soon.

I'm sharing it now because it acts as a lens through which I view my own creative process and I find that helpful. Perhaps it will be helpful to other artists.  I'm sure I'm not the only one with abandoned blogs still living on the internet.  Bizarre Horizons is a free wordpress blog and it acts as an incredible notepad that I can access wherever I am, as long as I have internet connection or cell service. 

I won't promise I'll post often on Bizarre Horizons.  In fact, I might not ever add to the site; I'm just letting you know it exists.  You might enjoy the Morning Scribbler and earlier video posts that span from 2012 to 2020. I have many more projects that I might add to the PROJECT photo galleries and I might post more videos on the blog portion of the site.  I'm in no rush to do either.

As I sift through old files putting together examples and reference videos for the two workshops I now focus on, Creating Dala Art and 15 Ways to use a Sketchbook, I'm finding photos and images that once had great potential to develop into something meaningful to me.  Perhaps using Bizarre Horizons as a place to store and organize them will work well.

The following is written on the homepage of the site:

This site was created in 2012.  The title dates further back to 1984 when my sister-in-law, Bronwen, commented that the photograph of Alexis and me looked like the cover image for a magazine called Bizarre Horizons.  The magazine became a mental reality immediately, though never a published reality.  In 2012 my brother and I decided to publish Bizarre Horizons as an online magazine and began this blog as a testing site.  It never moved past the first post.  In 2015, while searching for a good wordpress theme for a student of mine, I discovered the Bindery theme and decided to breathe new life into Bizarre Horizons. My intention had changed.  Bizarre Horizons was to act as my think pad to help organize the diverse ways I express my experience of living through photography, paintings, sketchbooks and written journals.  I find the world and the universe in which I live to be a challenging, beautiful, dreadful and bizarre place. As I move forward and backward along my path, the horizon always changes.

In 2020 I discovered a new purpose for Bizarre Horizons.  It hosted my Morning Scribbler blog where I shared my daily habit of sketching before my logical brain clicks in, and sometimes before I've even had my first cup of coffee.  

That worked for a while. Time passed.  

A lot happened during the COVID pandemic when the world shut down. My journeys to France, England, Wales, Scotland and Greece were canceled. Live workshops were canceled. I spent far too much time creating online courses to fill the gap.

In 2021 I began traveling to France and the UK again … logistics were dreadfully challenging. I witnessed a shift in the way people interacted in both urban and rural areas. Parks in Paris where friends and families normally gathered on a daily basis were all but abandoned. An afternoon wandering alone through Parc André Citroën was a turning point in my journey as an artist.

I felt the shift. I found myself in unexplored territory within myself. I continue to be a daily explorer in that unknown land where all of my previous experiences, thoughts, feelings and emotions play hide and seek.

In 2022 the world had opened up a bit more. Travel logistics were still challenging and the way I experienced urban areas had changed after a year of  exploring the hidden world I'd stepped into while wandering through Parc André Citroën (PAC). My PAC Series was revealing clues to the mysteries of my life and my studio work was beginning to mirror my inner artist, my higher self, my soul … that which is, perhaps, my true identity.

By 2023 I'd begun to give more time to passions I'd abandoned such as creating dyes from plants and discovering how to turn the foraged pigments into inks and paints. I'd begun to play my fiddle every now and then and I danced through the house more often. I even started to sing again. I spent more time reading purely for pleasure.

The time spent at my computer dealing with social media and my online courses as well as the multitude of hours devoured due to constant software updates felt like time stolen from me, stolen from time in my studio, foraging the seasonal plants and exploring the work of other artists.

Years pass too quickly. I've outlived many friends and lovers. There's no time to waste. Years ago I felt there was plenty of time ahead of me to get to the things that really matter, but there has never been time to waste. NOW is the only time there really is.

Welcome to Bizarre Horizons.

Link to Bizarre Horizons: BizarreHorizons.com

View my art: www.ArtByChrisCarter.com

View my online courses: www.ChrisCarterArt.com and at Skillshare.com/ChrisCarterArt