Photography & Digital Art
Artist Statement
As I pursued the visual arts as a complement to my writing, I became engaged with the creative potential of images themselves, not only in the narrative sense of “telling a story,” but in their ability to express the potential sights that often lay dormant in our everyday surroundings, a vision of what remains unseen by a passing view. Naturalist and writer Henry David Throeau emphasizes this renewed sense of vision and exploration that is embedded within the world around us: “Nature will bear the closest inspection; she invites us to lay our eye level with the smallest leaf and take an insect view of its plain. She has no interstices; every part is full of life.” There is inspiration to be found in the seemingly ordinary—the more one looks, the more there is to see.
I’m drawn to pieces that embody this principle and explore the fundamental shapes and patterns that make up our lives. Although natural imagery and environmental themes have become a primary subject matter of my work, the source of my interest in any topic invariably stems from a questioning of consciousness, its relationship with the world around us, and the creative process that is born out of the impulse to express one’s unique vision.
The images below are a small sample of my work.
One of the reoccurring themes that I think about when I work on new images is transformation. Generally, I use the photographs I take as the raw material of a new piece, but in most cases the end result I have in mind doesn’t look much like the original picture. When I take a photo, I’m not exactly trying to capture a specific moment in time or a particular image. I’m thinking more along the lines of the potential that’s embedded in the photo, something that is waiting to be revealed once I start to work with it in more detail, to look at it with more of an imaginative view.
A quote that connects with the theme of transformation is from novelist Vladimir Nabokov. As a specialist in butterflies and moths, he often invokes the transformative potential, the latent creativity, that is embedded within the world around us: “I discovered in nature the nonutilitarian delights that I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception.”
