stone

Far Afield


What is it?

That's my favorite part of photography. You can't make this stuff up, right? So people have no problem asking - contrast that with painting! Basically no one will ask outright "what is it?" for fear of offending, or of showing their lack of art knowledge (at least that's why I refrain from asking...). A painting doesn't have to be "of" something, in a literal sense. But we photographers, we are stuck with reality.

Which is why I love it so much! It's real, and it's not. It's a rock, or a field of wildflowers, or a rainstorm, or Boston in the fall, or... Right?! *swoon*

Wait II


Some of you may remember "as we wait" - if not, you can find the images here: 1 2 3 4 5 6.

Back then, the train was the focus, green with Hopper and Gatsby's lonely light, blurred in its passing. The drawings were made across several sittings, after long conversations. Even before the painting began, hours were spent alone, waiting for the Metra to pass to capture image studies. Through it all, there was an undercurrent of waiting, of slowness, of passing hours. Of waiting.

All of those images were slowly made, saturated in time, conceptually allowing one moment to blur into and inform the next, so capturing the sense of not only Seeing but also Time.

I want to continue that in my current work, and see threads of it through the last year's photography. Through the medium of time, the familiar subjects are rendered unfamiliar, asking for more consideration - more time - from the viewer. Along those lines, R. S. Thomas wrote:
Life is not hurrying on to a receding future,
Nor hankering after an imagined past.
It is turning aside like Moses
To the miracle of a lit bush

May my work always be an act of turning aside to see miracles. Or at least of turning aside to See.