I am a photographer
and graphic artist. I am also a writer. Through my visual art, I strive to capture
and present beauty, to evoke peace and joy, and to achieve oneness with the
world around me (in all of its complexities). I am a child of the sixties in
America.
I live on a mountainside
overlooking Santa Fe, New Mexico, near the villages of Cerrillos and Madrid
(we pronounce that MADrid). I love the diversities and contrasts of New Mexico:
in geography, in climate, and in cultures.
I produce my art electronically,
with digital cameras, video equipment, computers and high-quality printers.
When I was 13 years old,
my father, a magazine editor, began training me as a photojournalist. I learned
the craft on a Speed Graphic press camera that shot 4" x 5" negatives. I learned
darkroom techniques. During my college years, while shooting for school newspapers,
my interests turned away from journalism to art photography.
While in college, I married
Linda, the love of my life; we were both 19 years old. We were to become partners
for life in every sense. Three years later, we brought our daughter, Meredith,
into the world. I went to work in corporate America.
More than 30 years passed
with my photography relegated to family events and vacations. Even so, during
that time, Linda and I took and saved well over 10,000 photographs.
For most of our lives, we lived in central Florida, in a condominium townhouse
on a lake.
During my twenties, I
sold greeting cards, then life insurance. Later, I started businesses -- a
health screening company, an insurance agency, even a personal counseling
firm -- which, after teaching me important lessons, all went by the wayside.
I worked in my father's business and, finally, took my father's job when he
retired. I hated my twenties.
During my thirties, I
became a freelance management trainer. Linda and I formed a corporation (The
Hall Wesley Group, Inc.) to support my work with large companies. We bought
a small Xerox computer for the business (even before IBM introduced the PC)
and began learning to use it. Wave after wave of computers followed.
We created what Alvin Toffler called an "electronic cottage." I got online
before most of us understood this thing called the internet. I marveled in
the ways the computer improved my writing.
During my forties, I came
to understand that, no matter how effective I became, training managers could
not change the world of work for people; it could not make the workplace more
humane, more fulfilling or more empowering. And I was distraught. (I am a
child of the sixties in America.) Then, I came to understand why training
managers couldn't change the world of work and set out to find -- or invent
-- something that could. I began focusing on socio-technical systems
in the workplace, and my work shifted from training to consulting and designing
organizational systems. Linda spent much of her forties physically devastated
by lung damage inflicted by a sick building where she worked, then, as she
recovered, distracted by a lawsuit against the evildoers. In our late forties,
we formed a new company, ChangeCraft Corporation, to install our methodologies
in large companies that had to transform themselves.
By the time I was fifty,
we had begun to thrive and prosper. We were serving some of America's most
famous companies, and I was enjoying building a team of ChangeCraft master
practitioners. Linda settled her lawsuit and we bought a beautiful chunk of
land in our beloved New Mexico. Meredith was in college, learning to be a
scientist and aiming toward veterinary school. Linda built a small vacation
home in New Mexico, anticipating an early retirement (and building a larger
house later). I planned to use the vacation home then as my office. Just two
months after completing her construction project, Linda was diagnosed with
breast cancer. As we fought the cancer, I developed new perspectives on life
and returned to my photography. We traveled extensively, and I began dreaming
of living in New Mexico as an artist with Linda after her victory over cancer
and her early retirement. Twenty-five months later Linda died from this cancer
and its complications.
I did not want to live
alone without Linda. I sold our Florida real estate and moved to our New Mexico
home, planning to bring Linda's 96 year-old mother to live with me as soon
as I could expand the house, building her a proper place to live.
Some months later, to
my shock and surprise, I fell in love with a New Mexico neighbor I was teaching
to use the computer. A complex and practical worman, she was even more wary
than I about this relationship that neither of us really wanted. But we each
engaged it and explored it, trying to see if it could possibly work. As things
progressed, we agreed that if we could make it work, we would marry
in the fall.
After I doubled the size
of the house over a nine-month period to create a completely handicapped-accessible
downstairs, my mother-in-law, Edith Bradley, moved to New Mexico. Only three
weeks after her arrival, she died of a stupid, hospital-induced infection.
I was lost again.
I was supported through
this next passage of grief by my fiancee, Corinne
Magron. Since we had come to believe that we could make our relationship
work, we were married in September 2002.
We now live in our newly
recreated mountainside home overlooking Santa Fe, New Mexico, near the villages
of Cerrillos and Madrid. We live with our expanded, combined animal family
of three cats, five dogs and a horse, striving to create harmony, comfort
and safety for ourselves and each other.
Peace.
DougWesley@HighWestGraphics.com
All images
are copyrighted by The Hall Wesley Group, Inc.
These images must not be altered, and may not be reproduced without permission.
High-quality prints are available for sale.
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This page was last modified September 16, 2002
