C.W. Barrett

My hope in color and poetry and image is much like your hopes, to discover something new to be enlarged by, maybe even bathe in. Obviously, I also hope that someone else might see what I see. And if you can see what I do, maybe I can see what you do, a conversation ensues, heartbeats quicken, passions flow. Life becomes a little larger, more well lit, better understood, more handsome to look at, more comfortable to live in. The art each of us bring, this Larger Truth, can change little or large parts of our Nature. This search for what is beautiful or true can sometimes be caught in a photograph, word, or moment now long gone. And yet these truths can also last forever inside us, if we take the time to focus on those things that can sweeten our lives.

Often in my photography, I am attracted to the thickness and abundance of life that exists within the darker shadows of our speedy, overlit world, that place where light has barely entered, that place where one has to work a little harder to see, to understand. Here, in this nuance and detail of life is where everything I love and hate begin to get very interesting.

I grew up in Los Angeles, CA, where my father, an oil painter, taught me how to paint with oils at an early age.  As a young man, I became an illustrator and cartoonist, later enjoying a career as an author, publisher and book marketer. I also spent many years as a popular teacher and public speaker with youth, veteran, college, business, church and prison audiences, these days discussing how we survive, or flourish, by paying more attention to the details and wildness of our Larger Inner Nature, as well as Creation’s Larger Nature outside–paying particular attention to the most gifted animal in all of the Big Bang–you and I.

My life has been one mostly devoted to seeking answers to the Larger Questions of Life, about the size and wonder of Nature or God, Science and Art, and how they can enlarge us, so I have often taken the time to write a poem or capture a photograph that might reflect this search.

Here, then, are a few of the moments in this journey and time and place where we all live out our rare lives, never to pass this way again:

Let’s talk sometime; you can contact me at Librobella@gmail.com.