particle pool

particle pool

FORMAL STATEMENT: It is the journey, the investigation of the overlooked [invitations] in modern art that interests me. Instead of rejecting the established canon, my aim has been to explore and develop new possibilities suggested by it. 

All of these images are [straight photographs] in the sense that they are single exposure, in-camera creations. They are made from fixed positions without camera movement, utilize action freezing shutter speeds, or faster, are printed in the traditional darkroom and incorporate no digital manipulation or enhancement. 

These photographs have evolved from my continuing exploration, artistic assimilation, and utilization of the natural distortions of the photographic lens, such as diffraction and aberrations. In this work I continue striving to create and further explore a photograph more draftsman like in its use of line, gesture, color blending, and transparency that is more directly expressive than henceforth possible. 

Since 1984 (moving from black and white to color) and again even more so in 1992 I have felt an urge to try and deliver more emotional impact through my photography, in addition to it's already existing meditative qualities. In 1992 I began exploring possible relationships between photography and painting, including extensive painting on my own. I have since felt that painting and painters have much more they can teach me about line and color than photographers, so I began extensive study of people such as Van Gogh, Cezanne, Matisse and de Kooning in about 1996. Most recently, I have actively begun creating rapid drawings, utilizing the spirit of automatism, to further enhance and inform my photographic language. 

This photographic work explores the innate distortions of the lens as an asset, a means of constructing two-dimensional images, which create effects and forms resultant from the simultaneous construction and deconstruction of objects through focus. These effects and forms are enhanced or obscured by specific use of light and color. The resulting images are not experiments but rather explorations. Planes of focus, layering, color mixture and juxtaposition have allowed me to break down the boundaries between foreground, middle-ground, background; I am fascinated when color becomes form and light becomes line.

Exhibition reviews focused on this work.

Future work which Particle Pool affected was
begun in 2005 and is called leela.



 

leela

LEELA (2005-) Work in progress, I began in the summer of 2005. These images are seen through the camera, they are not manipulated in a computer. After being involved in this work for awhile I realized this work takes many of the things I learned from images included in PARTICLE POOL and utilizes them in a different way. It is interesting to note these images did not begin until 4 years after that body of work seemed finished to me. 

That body of work seemed to end prior to my visit to the WTC in December of 2001 at which time working on art to me began to feel really inconsequential and unimportant in such a world. 

This newer work similar in spirit, seems to have evolved simply by doing my job and getting back to work but took a number of years to surface. 2002 now seems was a gestation period of little work and much burn out from drawing, painting and photographing heavily prior to that.

photographer's pencil

PHOTOGRAPHER'S PENCIL (drawings;1997-2000) This group covers drawings made between 1997 and 2000. These drawings were begun about half way through the making of the photographs in particle pool. 

One might refer to these drawings as personages. I made them from emotional necessity with the spirit of automatism in heart and hand. As with the paintings they were also made in an attempt to loosen and further inform my photographic language. 

These drawings were made very quickly in sessions lasting 2 to 3 hours in length sometimes longer or until I felt satiated. The sessions produced many drawings per outing, some pieces more successful than others. I drew a lot when I was young and then in college, both eras producing heavily labored efforts leaving only technique. For sure I was now being called by a medium I had mostly an adolescent relationship with. I was finally free as a mature artist and image-maker to reacquaint my self with graphite. 

I believe my thoughts in approaching this work were that speed can deliver emotional impact and polish can remove it. Over the years I had found that photography (a quick medium) had the ability to harness my subconscious thought in images I was seemly drawn to make. I recognized if my strengths as an image-maker were aligned with a medium like photography that I would play to them and trust my instincts. 

Finally I wanted to throw all the rules from drawing class out the window, I didn't mind the endless graphite refuse getting on the piece and along the way decided to use it (in fact court it) to slur and blur lines as a slow camera shutter might. Or as a blues player would bend and slur notes on guitar strings to accent more feeling in a solo. I wanted this work to have a raw power, so even the application of smuge-blurs were applied with quick aggressive jabs. 

I believe as people we do not hold a single visual image in our minds when we think of each other, but a composite of rapid thought-images culminating in a kind-of thought-feeling if I may. 

By the time this project seemed like it was done with me I had easily 1500 drawings to choose from, I'm still doing so. Like photography many sketches and attempts are executed and only a few images out of those efforts truly have a life of their own. 

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