As digital images proliferate –more than 30,000/minute uploaded to the internet by some accounts –are we just replicating what we see and not what we might see? I have long been drawn to abstraction, and long ago I started experimenting with the reduction of video and still images to their basics, isolating elements of form, color, and composition, operating in a visual space that was far from literal but still held meaning for the viewer. It was difficult, clumsy, and filled with technical problems.
The tools we have now make this so much easier, and over the last few years I have returned to experimenting as seen in my series Obscuring to Reveal. Beginning with natural scenes and using in-camera and post-exposure manipulation I try to discover unseen but felt visual ideas and feelings—probing the deep structure of the image.
In the process of doing this my work becomes one of discovery-- seeing what lies beneath, behind and within by surrounding myself with an image while distilling/probing/peeling away. It is an active journey, a geological expedition into the visual genome searching for truths that lie beneath. Much like the trite statement of the sculptor discovering the form in their material, I find myself reveling in what lies beneath and inside. While origins of some of the images are clear, others use in situ camera and lens movement, while still others are in silico explorations of natural images – but all are focused on revealing the underlying landscapes of form, meaning, and emotion.
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