Curious Photograph

Different is not wrong. Security is not liberty. Wealth is not freedom. Control is not strength. A loud voice is not charisma. Ownership is not love. I am a visual artist and create from my various references that I find in art; whether it be the surrealist qualities of the Paintings of Rene Magritte or Salvador Dali, to the abstract expressionism of Rothko and Mondrian to the sheer Beauty of a Monet and Seurat or the Striking and involved imagery of Van Gogh. I continuously try and break with convention, making images that are self-consciously allusive, and non referential. As Artists in the radical art movements of Cubism, Futurism, and Constructivism, twentieth-century, I have also experimented with vantage points, framing, and lighting, to achieve the fragmentation of Picasso or the complex intersecting planes of Lissitsky. I have applied techniques borrowed from both filmmakers and scientists, including the use of negative prints, camera-less photograms, close-ups, lens distortions, and montage. I work abstractly and non-linearly - however, my designs do have trends over time, usually with the goal of delaying recognition so a photograph may better dialogue with its viewer, free of labels. Recent techniques have included seeing without gravity, designing in soft focus, and using shapes to continue the photograph beyond the physical frame. My photographs reflect a more prosaic approach to photographic seeing ~ a fascination with the everyday, a preoccupation with the vernacular, an "ordinary," rather than an "extraordinary" vision. I value finding my ideal of beauty and decorum in nature and the simple life. There may be other, more descriptive or poetic words that may be used to define the "pattern" that connects the images, but the simplest meta-pattern is this: I take snapshots of moments in time and space in which a peace washes over me, and during which I sense a deep interconnectedness between my soul, the moment and the everyday world around me. My current projects are polar opposites, evolving abstract design in both natural and urban environments.