Long before I picked up my first camera, I fell in love with painting; its endless variety of forms, colors and textures offered me visual and visceral experiences of interior and exterior places I longed to visit. Yet the photograph - and more specifically the photographic print - has always been extrememly important in my life, its influence equalled by no other visual art medium and surpassed by very little overall. Being raised without access to art museums or galleries I discovered my favorite artists by accident, in book stores. Consequently, I've disseminated much of the art I have loved over the years through prints of art works rather than the original works themselves. Yet prints of original art can afford a uniquely intimate and endlessly variable experience and I've spent many happy hours immersed in favorite artists' monographs, returning whenever and as often as I like as if returning to a private oasis or sanctuary. Photographic prints from my own life have provided clues and contextual aid unavailable from other sources; their scarcity and shifting, kaliedoscopic view making them part of the story as well as the storytellers. Hence photographs - and physical prints - have helped me contextualize myself and the world at levels matched only by music and fiction, both of which continue to inspire and influence my work in tandem with the visual arts. And while I now have every opportunity to seek out and view art in its originally conceptualized form, I still highly value the experience learning from and enjoying prints of original visual art, and still love the physical print itself.
The Previous Work portfolios have a distinctive "photographic quality" in that these images are typically what one expects a historically traditional photograph to look like. I've recently begun exploring emotional and contextual possibilities in ways that have some visual similarities to painting yet still remain wholly photographic, and the portfolios in New Work reflect this gradual shift. The images in the most current and ongoing section "New Chapter" are comprised of layered photographs sourced from mutiple cameras of varying format, quality and resolution, all combined in the same image. Color, texture, and form are created through mixing these photographic layers; there is no actual or virtual painting done to the images. And while they are composed in the digital arena, they are constructed to be physical prints, the making of which is an integral part of each piece as texture and color are created with this end medium in mind. The images aren't truly complete until they are printed with as much fidelity as the current technology allows.
PLEASE NOTE! Just as original art works lose at least some color fidelity, detail and texture in a reproduction or print - these images also lose those elements when viewing them on a monitor or mobile device, thus creating problems for accurate viewing both up close and at a distance. I apologize for this limitiation and will hopefully be able to create a website that will allow a zoom in and out feature, as there are elements in each image that are constructed to reveal or conceal themselves depending on the print size and the distance from which they are viewed (and the person viewing them!).