Happy Valentine's Day -

"Be Mine"
digital photograph by Mick Mather
- click image to view full size -

"... love is the only gold ..."
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

HAPPY BALLANTINE's DAY -

"Selfportrait of the Artist Taking Back His Fair Share of the Day"
digital collage by Mick Mather

"... thou art to me a delicious torment ..."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

HAPPY VALENTINE's DAY -

"Fading Heart Valentine"

digital collage by Mick Mather

On days like today I think more than a few of us take pause to consider affections of the heart. In my short stay within this realm, I've been one of the lucky ones. Equal amounts of heartbeat, heartache, heartbreak and heart song have surely made things interesting. I suppose this lyric line from a popular standard expresses my point of view better than anything that I myself might say :

"To all the girls I once caressed
And may I say I've held the best
For helping me to grow
I owe a lot I know
To all the girls I've loved before"

Back to basics -

"Heart Shapes and Boxes"
digital collage & digital drawing by Mick Mather

The first thing I figure some of you will say is that, "he seems to have missed Valentine's Day by more than a week!" Fair enough that, since this piece has developed from a heart shaped box of candy given on that day. It was wrapped nicely in violet cellophane, with a bow and a thank you note. The items were arranged in various ways on the scanner bed, then scanned and further manipulated with the usual array of editors and filters here at the secret visual laboratory. A few digitally drawn elements were added into the mix for flavor and that measure of the basics mentioned in the introduction. As this developed, there was a soothing comfort in the shapes themselves within the altered arrangement. I believe there will be more work to come and a new series is developing.