INTRODUCTION:

Creative works and the space they occupy are interdependent. Art itself deserves a space for display. Music calls out for a listening place. And words want to be read. Without the space, the work languishes.

ARTSTUDIO is simply a space for me to place the works I have been creating over the last several years. The space is always a work in progress.

ART

Art is a spiritual process for me. I create, quite honestly, because I have this inner need and drive to do so. If I didn’t, I would be empty. Creating art, music, stories and poems, is reaching toward an understanding of humanness beyond my ability of mere description. It’s an attempt to establish a dialog with meaning using a poetic language. Each new image, word, sound, has the opportunity to become an enhanced connection in that dialog. At least that is what I hope for in creating.

Art Galleries

Tree|Sky|Shadow

Tree|Sky|Shadow was an attempt to catpure and transform my experience of walking in my local neighborhood. I walk in the evenings and sometimes the angle of the sun through the trees produces beautiful light and shadows. While the walk is a mundane activity, the memories of the trees now have deeper meaning for me, by allowing me to reflect. The images I see now are more my memory than what I actually saw when experiencing the world they are taken from.

Process: The images were taken with a simple point and shoot digital camera at low res. Many times I wasn't even looking through the viewfinder. I was walking and snapping the shutter. I brought the images into Photoshop for manipulation.

Sun|Sky|Cloud

Over the period of a year, I took pictures for the Sun|Sky|Shadow series from the roof of the building where I was working at the time. Mostly, the view is of railroad tracks and industrial warehouses. Early in the morning, or later in the evening when I stood out on the roof, the horizon and clouds could make me forget that I was at the edge of the city and that only a moment before, I was slaving away at my computer on the floors below.

Process: the images were taken with one of two off-the-rack digital cameras, depending which one I threw in the backpack that day. They were filtered extensively in Photoshop.

The Insignificance of Space and Time to the Immaterial

The Insignificance of Space and Time to the Immaterial is a series of digital paintings created over the period of a few days. The idea was to see progress in the stages of development.

Often, multiple versions of the same basic image emerge. Those versions become markers on a journey. As there are different versions of the same image, there are different versions of myself at different times.

I have a sense of lost time when creating. I get absorbed in the work because I enjoy seeing where it will lead. In that lost time, space expands, even though my actual workspace is cluttered. The challenge is always to become more human, deeper, more insightful than I was before. I would like to think that participating in the creation of something helps me achieve that goal.

Process: the images were created using Painter.

Wood|Stone|Flame

Wood|Stone|Flame is the longest running series of images I've worked on. It's basically a catch-all gallery for various nature and landscape images. I've been creating what I term "intimate landscape" for around 15 years. I enjoy being in nature, and so I find composing images both of the wide view and the close up as satisfying. I am drawn to form and texture. Form can be appreciated at a macro level, while texture often only reveals itself upon close inspection.