These are the three words most people I meet need to hear: You have permission.

We too often think we don't. It's like being locked in a room. We're so focused on the door with the giant padlock that we fail to notice the window that has been creaking open little by little behind us.

All your life, people have told you no, in one way or another.

Don't be an artist, you won't make money.
Don't make art like that, no one will like it.
Don't pursue that passion, it isn't practical.

Even when every single person in your formative years tells you exactly what you need to hear - to go for it, that you'll succeed - we internalize the lessons of the world. We witness struggle and it's easier to assume we will, too, rather than believe we may be the one who overcomes.

Action is far more difficult than inaction. To take action and also be subversive, or divergent, or weird...a step beyond difficult.

But you have permission, all the same as I do, to subvert expectations and fail gloriously and succeed stubbornly. To pave the way for others to do the same.

If not you, who? We need more people to realize they had permission all along. That this one life is all we're guaranteed, and it begs us to act.

Create. Make. Express. Unapologetically and with exquisite joy.

"Permission to Be", self-portrait April 2024


Permission is the flower blooming
amidst the frost in early spring,
petals opening like arms, saying:
join me.

Tags:   sony alpha fine art conceptual red umbrella artist permission self portrait

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I never feared the word Goodbye
until I realized one time would be the last.
When my lips parted to say it
I heard Stay, and Don't Go,
and only realized then
that Goodbye also means
I Love You.

Tags:   fine art photography conceptual grief death sony self portrait

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If you've ever watched a timelapse of a seed growing into a bud growing into a flower, or a ripe strawberry being overtaken by mold, or a baby growing into a child growing into an adult, then perhaps you know that continuity does not mean that something stays continuously the same, but rather continuously changes.

Anger will recede into forgiveness, but that does not mean it is a different thing altogether. Life is a series of shifts and transformations, the latest version only possible because of its predecessor.

A similar metamorphosis happens in art. The exacting days of impressionism, or cubism, or surrealism, may not exist in their heyday, but they have been reimagined again and again, fought against and romanticized, until we scroll here, now, looking at so much art that has exploded only thanks to the timelapse of art across the ages.

Today I'm taking a moment to be grateful for the timelapse of my life, and of the art that has preceded me to get to this place, and to all the shifts that are yet to come, should I be so lucky.

"Ode to Beksinski" self-portrait January 2024
Zdzislaw Beksinski is my favorite painter, and this year I'm taking some time to navigate through my most fundamental inspirations and pay homage to the roads they paved.

Tags:   brookeshaden fine art photography conceptual art surrealism zdzislaw beksinski self portrait

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I've been terribly negligent with my Flickr account, so I'm finally getting caught up on uploading some of my favorites from the last year+!

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