"Danilova In Class" Photograph - Limited Edition of 6

My work originates from a desire to freeze emotion, extracting the passionate components of the physical world. Black and White Infrared, the medium I’ve worked with for 50 years in addition, does something else. It records the invisible. I’ve tried to challenge and reinterpret this medium. This analog film, which is no longer manufactured, renders the Real world in terms of invisible light and, therefore, records a partially unseen reality. The magical and spiritual aspects of the subject are more imagined than perceived because the unseen can only be felt. The spectator is forced to stop looking and start feeling the Form. And, a form without feeling is a failure.
Like a ship on the open sea, my work confronts new emotional obstacles and becomes a physical adaptation to changes in my wellbeing. When the sea is calm and sunny, I’m working in black & white infrared film, when the seas get turbulent, I go back to drawing. When alone, I paint. It is solitary, so any quarantine is a soothing match and an inspiration to evoke things distant from me. My unfinished portraits represent work in constant transition, just like life. I am currently working on small 12” x 12” portraits of fictional or historical indigenous peoples from far off lands not fully understood where the tribal circular world is isolated from the Pandemic. This current portraiture differs from anything I’ve done before the Pandemic. It celebrates surviving cultures. I believe that the role of the creative process is to cast out uniformity, evoke the world of spirit, explore alternative world views.
My SpiritScapes are original polaroid photo enlargements unprocessed, not manipulated in any way, recording the anomalies of natural light. (They were chosen for all rooms in the MC Hotel of Montclair