I don’t know how to define myself as an artist. I pick up cameras and take pictures and record video (the camera is always recording). I sculpt time. I pick up brushes, dip them in ink or watercolor, and paint things. Lately, I’ve been exploring picking up an electronic brush and painting in pixels. I make ‘art.’ Yet my aspiration is to live all of my life as art. To witness every lost beauty. To feel grateful for the eternal moment. To live fully awake. And to share that experience.

I don’t know how to define myself. I’ve had many definitions, many stories of who I am. But they always change. The person I was is no longer the person I am. Change is constant. I told stories of myself, to myself, and to others, that became real. Be careful of what stories you tell, they may come true. I hesitate to tell the story of who I think I am now, for I’m certain it will change, and I wouldn’t want to speak falsely into truth. In the end they are all just stories (we are made of stories after all).  I’m trying to see deeper, to the consciousness that experiences, forms, and believes art/stories into reality. In the moments I see past ego, all of life and the universe becomes art. I’m trying to define myself beyond definitions, beyond a fixed perspective. To become a life of art, within an infinite omnipresence of art, Fibonacci-ing out into the eternal bliss of the holo-enfoldment of consciousness. That’s the aspiration. And the experience of those moments beyond stories. Still, I return to desire, consumption, and fear more often than I’d like to admit. 

I express my journey with brushes, cameras, and computers; often with art taking on poetic forms. I often work spontaneously and intuitively. More gardener than architect. Inviting an art-spirit to manifest itself in the act of arting. I capture moments in time and sculpt them into being. Feeling what they need. Breathing, and cuddling their hearts to keep them alive. 

Connection inspires me. Connecting to other people in collaboration. Connecting to nature. Connecting stories. Connecting to the universe, both made of, and beyond, stories. The universe is cutting itself. It’s hilariously tragic. There is no ‘us’ and ‘them.’ There is only us.  

- Z