Artist Statement

I make art from digital photos. Though range of this work is vast, my images tend toward the painterly. As a child, I watched my grandmother work in oils and watercolor, and my father in colored inks.  From them I learned to value form and void, plane and perspective, color and movement in a rectangular frame.

The challenges I face in my medium are much the same as they faced in theirs; my choices may differ, but the fundamental nature of the process is the same. Art is art, and medium is medium. The challenge is to look through the medium to see the art itself.

My digital images live in the twilight that lies between constructed images (painting, printmaking, etc.) and recorded images (photography). It can be realistic, surrealistic, impressionistic, or fantastic, or it can share in all the subtle shadings in between.  We go wherever the image leads.  Almost always, the image leads me rather than the other way around.  I believe other artists’ experience is similar.

I like representational images with a little bit of narrative & lots of heart, even a touch of daring. I like rich, saturated color and confident line. I like spaces with people in them, or whose presence is still felt even if they are gone. I like strong composition that engages the eye & mind without calling attention to itself. I like a whiff of strangeness. I want to share my sense of wonder in the world, comfortably simple, and yet inconceivably complex.

For me, that is what art is all about.