Boundaries
The country landscape is a time-honored tradition in both painting and photography. Bucolic scenes of rolling hills beckon the rural artist. But what of the urban landscape artist? In the urban environment the landscape is often defined by walls, fences, corrugated metal, even barbed or razor wire create both physical and visual limits; barricades – literally boundaries. We’re not only prevented from crossing into our neighbor’s spaces we aren’t even allowed to see into their yards.
Growing up in the country we built precarious footbridges across streams to make our route to each other’s yards more direct. We trimmed the trees to wave to our neighbors at their kitchen sinks. In the city, and even the suburbs, we wall ourselves in; barricade ourselves from our neighbors.
Why do we build these barriers? Are we afraid? Does “the other” make us fear for our lives? Do we fear for our possessions; our things? Or, are we simply looking for privacy in an ever more crowded environment?
Pears
Pears exhibit a gestural sensuality that is almost human. These images allow these simple fruits to exude sadness, love, timidity, even rejection. The pears creep out of the darkness to reveal themselves. The images are not still lives but portraits.
Transformations
Transformations is a series photographs of walls whose surfaces, after years of being changed by weather, paint, rust and algae, are becoming complex, organic paintings with the passing of time.
The Transformations photographs are about rebirth; about the possibility of beauty in destruction.
Leaf Drawings
In the urban landscape the natural and the built environment can collaborate; collide: co-exist without awareness of the other.
These photographs, taken on city walks, explore those relationships. They are images of the natural world as it is found. Isolating leaves, vines, branches and fruits they create miniature “drawings”; a visual Haiku of the unnoticed.
In the Silences
“It is hard to follow one great vision in this world of darkness and of many changing shadows. Among those shadows men get lost” —Black Elk Speaks
As the momentum of our everyday lives increases we are bombarded by images and pitches. 80 channels of fact and fiction are available at our fingertips. Magazines and newspapers pile so high we can scarcely open our doors to step past them. The message lights on our phones flash incessantly. Books grow dusty on our shelves. Finding a moment of solitude when we can silence the cacophony and make sense of our lives has become increasingly difficult.
In the Silences is about finding that illusive moment, when the stillness of a place allows us to quiet our minds and to find a sense of mystery.
In the Silences depicts the landscape at dusk as the light fades and objects are drained of their colors. It is this moment, when inanimate objects seem to glow with an internal light, that the familiar seems mysterious and common objects seem pregnant with the silence and meaning we have lost.
Fallout
Fallout is a series of photographic images that addresses issues of decay and isolation in an increasingly fragile world.
Using images of places and things that are familiar and benign, Fallout questions the stability of our environment and the objects and values we take for granted. Isolated from their usual context these images portray our society as is it breaks down; as what is familiar and comfortable becomes increasingly confused and unpredictable.
Fallout considers both the specific issue of nuclear fallout and the greater issues of both physical and spiritual “fallout” in the post-nuclear society; a society where our assumption of what is good is increasingly called into question.
Fallout exposes the isolation and decay that is quietly chipping away at our expectations and the givens upon which we base our understanding of the world and ourselves.
Rapture
Rapture: a feeling of intense pleasure; joyous ecstasy; the expression of ecstatic joy.
Before electricity people’s lives were directed by natural light. They watched it for signs of good weather and bad and for the change of seasons. Now we check in with the weather channel. Natural light often goes unnoticed as we hasten to turn on lights as the sky darkens or slip into the fluorescent light of our offices. But, when we have the opportunity to experience light in its purest form it can scare or cheer us; make even the most mundane spot seem romantic. 19th century painters understood the drama of light. They painted the moments when the clouds opened and “divine” light fell on the land.
Working intermittently as a travel photographer for more than 25 years, particularly in 3rd world countries or off the beaten path locations with little artificial light, I had the chance to document the power and beauty of the natural light that is all but lost in the developed world.
Chimera
Chimera – an illusion or fabrication of the mind
The dark unmoors us from the familiar. The glow of artificial lights directs our attention to objects and locations that seemed unimportant in daylight. We are isolated in our environment, unable to piece together the edges of the world.
In darkness we are fearful. It recalls the monsters of our childhood imaginations. The familiar becomes surreal. Our dreams haunt us. Yet, the night is also freeing. It disconnects us from what anchors us to our daytime lives. It allows us moments of magic and wonder.