Writer's block is a rotten visitor. It arrives unannounced, it decides to stay for an extended visit, and simultaneously wreaks havoc on areas of your life that you believed where unshakable. For me, this uninvited visitor arrived one day when my stress level was at its peak, and as it does to so many people when it drops by, it halts the creative flow. The effect for me...I couldn't remember how to draw. Yes, I literally forgot how to do what came most naturally to me. Unaware that the visitor was on the premises, I got increasingly more frustrated since I thought I was simply experiencing the grand mal of brain farts. Those frustrations morphed into something more serious and eventually they siphoned off my creative flow like a dry arroyo in June.

What came out of this was an extended period of personal research and contemplation, hermit style. I came to understand, these strengths and weaknesses were of my own creation. Your experience, what it looks like, feels like, and sounds like, are ultimately your creation. I have spent a lot of my life pulling at "the leash." Too much time has been spent trying to free myself from the control of others. Yet, suddenly, without warning, just as quickly as the creative block sets in, my perspective clicks over like a Viewmaster. I remember that there is no leash.
However, I want to make something clear. The mere awareness of an idea does not make it experience. Information is ignorance until application. I have spent a lifetime believing in the leash, as most of us do. The leash can be seen everywhere in our culture. Our economic system is built on the idea of scarcity. My childhood religion took the notion of God out of my heart and put it in the clouds. These are two fundamental systems we are consistently interacting within, and, as a result, they influence what we see when we look through the Viewmaster. Click through a few of these images and you'll see they are both conceptually rooted in lack, limitation, and fear. The leash. You live what you believe and believe what you are told. The brain habituates all of its connections. I have spent 28 of my 29 years habituating a belief in the leash. I have spent one year habituating a carte blanche mindset. My leash is fading and I'm ready to bolt out of the yard.

Carte Blanche
n. pl. cartes blanches
1. Unrestricted power to act at one's own discretion; unconditional authority.
2. A blank paper, with a person's signature, etc., at the bottom, given to another person, with permission to superscribe what conditions he pleases. Hence: Unconditional terms; unlimited authority.
[French : carte, ticket + blanche, blank.]

This artwork was commissioned by Mr. Lewis Freed.