Ryan Monroe hadn’t considered himself a control freak by nature. Then he found himself at Redstar Recording in Silver Lake, Calif., with its myriad instruments scattered around, just begging to be fiddled with. For a guy who can play just about anything, it was impossible to resist. So Monroe took a breather from his continuing role as the 34-year-old bastion of versatility in Band Of Horses to record A Painting Of A Painting On Fire (RCM). Monroe hopes to tour this summer behind A Painting before things get too busy with Band Of Horses, which is finishing its fourth album with producer Glyn Johns and eyeing a September release. Monroe will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new feature on him.
Monroe: Christopher Wilson is basically the sixth member of Band Of Horses. He is with us everywhere we go, documenting us with photography and video. He is responsible for the artwork for every BOH record, all of the innovative projections during our live shows and is probably the hardest working individual I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. I would venture to say that any picture of us smiling has a lot to do with the bright light that is emitting from his kind heart. I really can’t say enough about this person. It’s like he knows something … hmmm … He has “the eye.”
Another one of my favorite artists is the beautiful and talented Lydia See. She really loves experimenting with all different platforms of art: installation, mixed media, printmaking, photography. Lydia designed my album cover, set up the still life and photographed it. Like Chris, Lydia manages to make the normal somehow look extremely interesting and the strange look mundane. Both Chris and Lydia have “the eye.” Honestly I never really “got” photography until I met Chris. And now, living with Lydia and watching her curate our growing collection of art, I am really starting to come around to considering photography a very important, expressive art form. I guess I always thought it was the subject that made the picture great, but it’s really not. From having the pleasure of spending time with these two people, I now realize that it’s how and more importantly when the photograph is taken that makes it great. It’s a lot more involved than I’d previously thought. Whatever it is that makes one picture better than the other, Chris and Lydia know how and when to find it. Check out their work, find yourself a camera, any camera, and just jam with it. You may find that you have “the eye.”
Chris is now one of my best friends, and I’m going to marry Lydia. But, I was a fan of their art before I knew them. Lucky me, I guess!
Video after the jump.
