A few years ago, my mother gave me a little sack of dried lavender to have nearby. She said that its smell is comforting and relaxing and I should keep it around my desk as I would make my work more enjoyable. It’s true. For someone who sits so much inside a room at a desk, the smell of dried lavender is a delightful reminder that there is a whole world outside of these walls. It’s easy to overlook this detail when you get lost in doing work because doing work for a living is different from creating art for the soul.
I try to have around me all kinds of small stuff that are from “outside”.
Small reminders of nature. Two small rocks, which weirdly enough, are also a gift from my mother. A gorgeous piece of jewelry done by Bousoulas Konstantino, which looks like it was found in the earth just like that. It’s like an organic piece of silver. A gift my father gave me on our trip to Thassos. Nearby there is a large wooden board where I tape cotton paper when I paint watercolor plus a dirty piece of rag made from an old shirt I liked. For some strange reason, I also have this brick made from cork and some wood puzzles from my grill. (Yes, a girly grill that has the thrill)
I used to own a large cubic piece of andesite from the city center which I received as a gift one late afternoon from a guy who was giving me a ride home. He said that is the perfect conversation starter. You meet a girl, you ask her if she wants to see the andesite stone you have, curiosity will push the conversation and there you have it. He was right though. I never knew if he was crazy or just had a creative spark of genius. I guess most of the time those two are indistinguishable.
There, in the center of it all, there is a screen. This little window to a digital world of opportunity, wonder, and beauty. Of course, is not all sunshine and rainbows, we, the ones who survived the early internet and its crazy videos, we can’t unsee some of the stuff. I will throw away all my cups and jars and I’ll just go back to my man Diogenes and we will drink water from our cupped hands. Other things that represent nature, are the screen backgrounds that I use. And this is how I create my own wallpapers.
Do you remember the old windows wallpapers?
The one with the green hill and clear blue sky?(Sonoma County). What about the little island with 3 palm trees? Remember that one? Yes, yes, the desert dune under a full moon, the yellow tulips, the pink wall with a little blue window, the black and white dog, and so on are all so memorable and beautiful. Seeing of of them right now would just flood me with emotions of longing. I can already hear the Winamp playing Dj Mike Llama. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, careful out there.
I really loved old wallpapers and I still do except that nowadays I create new ones myself.
I take photos, I edit them and inside those pixels, I try to capture a feeling I had when I observed an exact moment in time. Pictures I took on a walk, or on a trip, but don’t even trip dawg because you can walk right past this and just go ahead and do your own thing. I say, create your own backgrounds, use your screen as you would use a frame for a picture, and ignore all the background noise. You are being haunted by the belief that you are wasting your life on a constant so try to capture it because that would make you more aware and more present.
I, therefore, gift you my favorite wallpapers that I’ve created and worn on my display for quite some time now. They have a little wear and tear but have some respect boah, these are not your everyday wallpapers, these are memories stored as pixels. I hope you will find one which you will like and maybe even get to wear it for a while. Sometimes in the future, you might find it in a folder and remind you of a little part of your life where you decided that you can make everything around you beautiful and you started with a damn wallpaper.
And if that isn’t nice, I don't know what is.
You know how to save them, don't you? Click on the photos you want to download and then just right click and "Save Image As" . . .
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I write on this blog almost weekly and you can find details about my graphic design work and get in touch on this website.