Donald Diddams
The Art of Digital Art
Enchantment
A Man and the Sea -- 2011
Concern with the modern world’s problems can lead to frustration not knowing how to help fix them. But in that frustration and the rush of daily life it is easy to lose sight of why it matters. The editors’ comment in the March-April edition of Orion Magazine says it well:
“What is much harder is to live life in a way that does not ignore, rush past, or postpone that part that has to do with enchantment. … [I]n our effort to live more lightly on the planet, enchantment may be the resource we need the most of.”
Perhaps one of the many roles of art is to help make enchantment more accessible. Rather than being an escape, enchantment with the natural world and with each other may be an antidote to the disregard and mean spiritedness that seem so common today.
A Well of Enchantment -- 2011
Donald Diddams 
I like that, “Enchantment.” I like that it can be an antidote to all the meanness we see daily in the news, in our communities. Another word we have trouble with is joy. Can we experience joy when we look at nature anymore, after all that has been done to it in our need to care for ourselves?
I know that the Dog Whisperer, Cesar Milan, says that excitement is not happiness. That is true of us as well. And, joy is not pleasure or excitement either. It is experienced through connecting with the profound, with love and respect.
Your work, as I see it, inspires a quiet joy, respect, and enchantment with the environment.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment, Melinda. I often feel the tension between beauty (or enchantment) and worldly concerns. While certainly not bookends that define the limits of a response to that tension, the last two posts (this and the previous one) may become channel markers or reference points for me.
Thank-you for sharing your thoughts and your beautiful work, Donald. (It’s a joy to visit your world.)
Thanks, Linny! Such a lovely comment!
Very nice!
I particularly like the atmospheric effect in that first image… wonderful!
🙂
Thanks, spilledinkguy! I think it’s the greenish water and the light along these wide white beaches. Glad you like it!
Hi Donald,
I like the work you’ve been doing lately. Just for the record, I find that sculpture quite garish.
This piece here, with the pastel colors, looks to me like one of those old-fashioned biplanes zooming off into the distance, leaving behind a wake of smoke or cloud or some such.
Thanks so much, Jala! It was a challenge to get back in the groove after a change of environments. The sculpture? Garish? I guess so! But then this is Florida where garish fits right in.