Painting from blurry images, you would think, would be a challenge. But it's no different from painting anything else except for one thing: at the beginning it messes with your head. It's as though the brain looks at the visual information and registers it as something that's actually moving. Either that or that something is wrong with its own vision. Sometimes I felt my eyes seemingly trying to adjust and focus - a strange sensation.
But when you get past that and understand that, in reality, all you're looking at is merely an arrangement of subtly gradating colours, the whole process is much simpler. Imagine a sunset; the deep blue at the top, reds and pinks and the bottom and oranges in between that. Nothing there is moving; at least, not in such a way as to be blurry to the eye.
So what we're really looking at is really a trick. An illusion. The camera that took the image was moving at the time the shutter snapped and this produced the image. And what's left is the impression of movement, of blur.
Like I say, you might think this would be a real challenge. But it's not been as difficult as I initially thought. And all because I was able to rationalise the fact that I'm merely looking at an arrangement of colours that depicts the impression of a blur.
Once I got my head around that, the rest was plain sailing.
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