By nature I’m inclined to alchemy, whether mixing pigments with sensitizer and tree sap in the photo lab, making medicinal plant tinctures, or preparing spiced ghee in the kitchen. Mixing, stirring, and altering matter. Creating something from something else. I don’t think there’s a higher purpose in life than to create.
My work is the result of engaging two related art forms: photography and printmaking. Both are about image making and both involve time. A photograph represents a moment in time, a mere fraction of a second. In contrast, a finished gum bichromate print happens slowly, day after day, a layer at a time, until a week, or a month, or a year later – you can’t ever be sure – you say “That’s enough, it’s done now.”
I’m interested in the Japanese aesthetic called wabi-sabi. It’s a way of looking at the world that evolved from the Buddhist assertion of impermanence. Wabi-sabi expresses itself in the simple, natural, ever-changing, decomposing world we live in. Fall leaves are an expression of wabi-sabi. So is rust. Beauty in decay. Impermanence.
Water too, along with all the trappings – shorelines, beaches, piers, and boats attract my eye. But it’s our interaction with the force of the deep, the dark, the mysterious ocean that keeps my attention. Life beyond the one we’re able to see with our eyes. It draws me close, I think, like a moth to the flame, like a roll of unexposed film in the dark of a camera awaiting the push of the shutter button. Awaiting revelation.
