ABOUT THE ELEGANT HAUNTING
"What Is Wrong With You?"
Some would say I am obsessed with Halloween. This is not strictly true; Halloween is simply a convenient stage on which to pull back the (red crushed velvet) curtains on my latest dalliances and oddities.
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It may have started when, as an impressionable ten-year-old, I finished reading every Agatha Christie novel and set my heart on learning French so I could, convincingly and airily, enunciate "Hercule Poirot." My lifelong obsession with old books borders on a disorder.
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The older the object, the worse the condition, the more stories it has to tell -- and stories are everything to me. The things people leave behind are, to this daydreamer, portals to a history. And histories that aren't written out to be read, I feel obliged to write. Or photograph. Or paint.
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My name is CJ Draper. I have issues, and I adore them.
"Just...why?"
I find most things hilarious, mortality included. I have lived too long to take anything very seriously, myself included. I firmly believe that if I have not yet failed at something, there's no good reason to believe I can't do it. At the same time, if I don't know what I'm doing, I can't expect myself to be good at it. Somewhere in there is an extreme freedom to create happy, horrible, hysterically disturbing art. But always with at least a vague tinge of beauty.
"What Are You?"
I am a photographer, writer, musician, decorator, gardener, designer, and doer of diverse things. If we're bragging here, we must speak in the third person:
CJ Draper is, among other things, a musician and vocalist who performs across the blues / jazz / swing / gospel / rock spectrum. Her happy place is the 1920s to 1960s, and her unusually deep, resonant tone is instantly recognizable. She has traveled the world as a photographer and natural light photography guru for the past twenty-plus years, and has been a black-and-white specialist since day one. Her writings on art and art philosophy have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and it has been her distinct pleasure to mentor hundreds of artists worldwide over the years. Her original artist bio many years ago began with, "I like Cocoa Puffs and red wine, not at the same time." This rings true still today.
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Photo by the brilliant Robin Fulton. Please do seek her out and tell her that she is God's gift.