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 y current photographic series, Interior Landscape, uses natural distortions
present in our everyday world- namely, moisture on windows- to evoke a
painterly image that recontextualizes our everyday architectural landscape.
While focusing on the minute details of these natural distortions, we enter
a space of quiet contemplation, which simultaneously inspires a new kind of
internal and external vision.
After several years of combining painting and photography with mixed
results, one very cold day in Minnesota I looked through a window completely
covered in condensation out into the frosty landscape. I realized I could use
the camera to reinterpret the world around me into a form akin to that of
painting. It was a paradigm shift for me in the way I saw all landscape from
that point on; now I photograph contemporary architecture distilled down to
a series of compositional planes. I then obscure this composition by
rephotographing it through water-coated glass, thus juxtaposing painterly
abstraction and photographic realism.
In a fraction of a second, the camera has the ability to capture
unadulterated realism, while through the veil of a stream of water the
selective focus of the camera's lens allows for the painterly abstraction to
simultaneously exist. Transported to a contemplative state that becomes more
profound each time we view the work, these Interior Landscapes become visual
meditations. In this way, I'm simulating the experience of looking at a
painting that is actually a photograph.
When looking at a painting, I'm drawn into the composition and given the
opportunity: first, to explore the overall piece, and second, to further
examine its details and materiality. It's during this second viewing, this
deeper investigation, that the painting really pulls me in, and I begin to
notice things I hadn't the first time around. This is where I begin my
internal dialogue, and where I'm transported to a contemplative state that
becomes more profound each time I view the work. It's like
a visual meditation. This is the painterly experience I now create via
photographic means in my Interior Landscape series.
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