derrière1 Print

Born Leeds, UK. Currently based in Ripon, UK. Since childhood I've tinkered erratically with a creative mix of photography, poetry, painting, writing, cine, copywriting, video, scriptwriting, screenplays – and latterly photo-imagery and photo-abstract. My desire is to discover, influence and reveal hidden visual aspects within photographic or graphic originals, ultimately to create a true abstract image. However, I often find this process halted by the image as it is at a certain point! PHOTO-ABSTRACT My attempts to get to true photo-abstract can be frustrating, and frustrated, by the progression of the piece itself. Abstract from absolute zero is highly achievable. Abstract from a starting point photo-original is trickier. Subjective awareness makes it impossible for me to escape absolutely the original image – but those viewing the finished result don't suffer the same constraints. But for me aesthetic abstract is only reached when the shape, flow and texture of the progressing image finally loses any emotional attachment to the original - and provokes a new and independent expressive response. This inability to achieve total abstract every time happens at various working stages – when the work itself dictates that I must stop at that point – and a photo-image results... ...PHOTO-IMAGERY Each photo-image I create is a “failure” in the sense that it didn't become a non-representational abstract completely shaking off its origins. But the compensatory factor is that an emotional aspect that has dictated its final form – whether that image depicts simple exuberance, the stark emptiness of lost love, the charged space between conflicting protagonists, or the passionate fusions of sexual tension and pleasure. It is this uncertainty of a final outcome at the outset of a piece of artwork that makes the process fascinating – and addictive! www.petewardart.wordpress.com. www.petewardart.co.uk