My studio is the street – The world is my palette – Life is my canvas
I call my art Out and About Notecards. Subjects range from myriad images of Russian churches taken from 1985 to 1998, to juxtapositions of line, light or hues, sometimes a series, as in “On Reflection” or “Windows on my World.” But it is mostly solo shots of that which entices my eye – doors, couples, signs, graffiti, reflected light, shapes and shadows.
I print my cards one or two to a page on matte cardstock, using a printer that accurately represents the color and tonality seen through my lens. I love the velvet look of the ink on paper – a quality very different from that printed commercially in large numbers.
Images – a perfect alignment of angle, altitude, color, shadow, form. A never-to-be-repeated instant. The word seen, not spoken, nor written. I call myself a fast-grab photographer – regretting, always, the shots noticed too late or seen from a fast-moving vehicle – the goats herded late afternoon across a dusty road in New Mexico, the child with a luminous balloon partially blocked by a turning bus, dense crowd or simply my own inhibitions. I won’t shoot to discredit or denigrate.
As most artists do at some point, I found my favorite medium – photo-silkscreening. Combining images in the darkroom, knowing when I shot, what they would become. In the end the chemicals used to clean my screens and toxic inks prevented my pursuit of the genre. No other media mesmerized until I saw the work of a photographer whose oeuvre included both the subtly manipulated and nuanced “as-they-were” images and felt at long last that I had come home.
I don’t want to mat, I don’t want to frame. I am also a writer and poet and thus meld my view of the world, both written and visual, on a note card.
Below are a few samples of my photography.