David Watts
Discipline/Expertise;
photography ( as a career)
writing (as a calling)
Address
773 Glengarry Place
Fredericton, New Brunswick
Telephone
[506] 459-5358
Email:
wattsdf@nbnet.nb.ca
Organization:
Fictional Friends
Website:
... not on your life. But seriously, while I enjoy the Internet and use it a great deal, I don’t look there to meet my friends nor to find new people. I go to the ‘web’ to search out information, and to that extent, I will continue. Whether or not I eventually have a presence there remains to be seen, but for now, I am quite satisfied in the real world, thank you.
Background and Training:
Commercial Photography, New York Institute of Photography, NYC, 1969
Numerous writing workshops through WFNB, PWAC and others
Achievements:
35 years of continued marriage (Ana Watts, nee Dearborn, writer, editor, journalist)
Productions/Exhibitions/Publications:
... not yet
Career Highlights:
Member, WFNB
Founding Member, Fictional Friends
Artist Statement:
... as retirement from salaried daily work sticks its head above the horizon, and prepares to careen headlong straight at me, I bask in the enjoyable anticipation of satisfying the various muses which have snipped at my heels for over forty years. It was way back then that I entered the heady world of photography with the intention of saying something, of expressing my world in what I saw around me.
... it wasn’t until I had mastered – as much as I could – that way of saying something, that I began to yield to the tug of shifting my expression from the image to the word. I began writing fiction as a way of portraying my visual world in language, much like I had first attempted to explain my knowledge of life in imagery.
... my hope now is that I can blend the two in ways that, whether they have been done better by others or not, will enable me to add to the world’s conversation, to say something ... more.
Areas of Focus:
... I have completed many drafts of more than two dozen short stories, one novel, and the beginnings of two other long works. The one creative work which gives me most satisfaction however, is the creation of postcard stories accompanied by fine photography, a genre which I hope to develop as I have time.
Future:
... after spending the vast bulk of my life creating other people’s art for pay, I look forward to creating my own work for next to nothing.
Imagery – that’s the idea! Whether it’s a photograph worth a thousand words, or a paragraph sparking a thousand images, David Watts has strived to offer a glimpse of the world as he knows it.
At fifteen, David took up his father’s camera – the one father used to make pictures of morning suns rising over the Nashwaak River or sparkling banks of powdery snow along Canada Street in Marysville – and began a love affair with imagery, developed and fixed in the fusion of technology and creativity.
After thirty years of professional photography as his chosen path, a career which led him to weddings, industrial sites, portrait studios, and city newsrooms, David had coffee with a friend. “I want you to read this, and tell me what you think.” Friend had written a short story and David’s interest in writing fiction was piqued. “I could do that”, and do that he did.
A decade and more have past since that cup of coffee, and his output now measures in the dozens of stories, one finished novel and another in gestation.
Imagery – that’s the message! David writes his stories like he makes his photos, as visual expressions of the ideas his fertile mind cannot confine. Whether the tales accompany a photograph, giving it background and mystery, or the pictures flesh out the themes of human relationships often too basic for words, David’s work is fresh and forthright, visual and thematic. The eyes have it.
