Discovering Your Personal Aesthetic

Most of us are not aware how profoundly our personal aesthetic influences our lives. It is an integral aspect of our humanity and an especially important gift to creatives. It influences us and our art more than we know. Our choice of tennis shoes, political causes, wallpaper, music, pets, restaurants, motor cars and artistic pursuits are all guided by our personal aesthetic.

Over the past eleven years, conducting workshops, mentoring, and doing photography reviews, I have become aware that many photographers cannot articulate their personal aesthetic as it applies to their practice. The inability to do so and act upon it can hinder one’s creative path: lack of focus, difficulty in creating bodies of work, difficulty in recognizing successful, innate creative choices. The combination of mastering one’s craft and working within the context of one’s personal aesthetic is critical in developing a successful art practice.

The workshop will be a four to four and a half hour conversation with a combination of introduction/explanation, writing and critique/discovery. The participants will be asked to bring a flash drive with one or two bodies of work, pen and paper, one printed image and artist statement that you think best represent your art.

“Finding one’s personal aesthetic can be a simple thing.  Like finding a flower in one’s pocket, or a dragon.”  Franklin Cincinnatus, 2023

This will be an inaugural workshop in the new Laughing Goat Studio with Keith Kesler.