Artist’s Statement
I have been drawn to the environment and spirit of the natural world for as long as I can remember. As a child growing up on Galveston Island, I spent many hours on beaches, in pastures, and beside bayous to experience, learn, and explore. That was the beginning of my journey to “see” nature. Today, more than half-century later, as a freelance, outdoor, nature, and fine art photographer, I am still on that quest to experience and understand the natural world.
If pressed, I categorize my art as interpretive nature imagery since a majority of my subjects include wildlife, plants, insects and outdoor scenes. Occasionally however; my inherent connection with old and decaying objects as artifacts of the lifestyles of prior generations is evident in my images. My images range from macro, close-up, and abstracts to intimate, rural and grand landscapes.
Like Tolstoy, I believe the purpose of art is to convey feeling or emotion. Through my art, I express my feelings for the locations I visit and the wonders of nature that I encounter along the way. Rather than simply documenting a scene, my fine art works serve to communicate my memories and feelings about the subject or scene and to evoke an emotional response from the viewer.
My camera is one of the primary tools I use to achieve my artistic goals. Further, my experience and education in computers and technology allows me to take full advantage of the digital darkroom. I find digital photography to be exciting and almost limitless; allowing me to overcome many of the technical challenges that previously presented barriers to ways of communicating emotion to viewers by photographers in the past. Technology enables my creative side to draw from my technical side to express my experiences in nature more deeply than ever before. The digital age is truly an exciting time to be a photographic artist!
I create many of my fine art images by painstakingly layering multiple images, adding digital brush strokes, and may even include additional scenic elements. Each image can take 80 hours or more to create, however I often lose track of time and space when I am in the throes of the creative process. The result is a unique work of art, evoking the mood of an old master’s painting or the vibrancy of contemporary art.