Medium: Photography
I Grew up in Hollywood, CA. At 18 moved to Austria (mainly Vienna) for 14 months, which totally changed my life, and gave me a new perspective on the world around me. I began taking a lot of pictures, but didn't realize how magical photography was for me until I got back to the US and was able to use a darkroom for the first time. I was immediately captivated with something that fully charged me, and have been pursuing the art of photography ever since. By developing my own photographs, I realized that I could manipulate the results, thus expanding my possibilities for self expression. The advent of digital photography opened the possibilities even more. I really enjoy exploring what I can do with an image once it's out of the camera.
That was over 60 years ago. I was in art school then, the California College of Arts & Crafts, and concentrated mainly on photography, though my major was in advertising art. I got my BFA and later earned an MFA in photography from Fort Wright College of the Holy Names. For many years I put a lot of energy into having my work being seen and sold, so I participated in many gallery shows, both one person and two person shows and also juried shows. I won several awards and I did a number of commissioned pieces. My work is in several collections, including the International Center for Photography in NY, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Smithsonian. These days, I don't put much energy into showing or selling my work; I do it mainly for my own pleasure and need for self expression.
I'm inspired by what I see around me. I am particularly drawn to plants/flowers and to water as subjects. I find myself stopping to really look at these things all the time. In plants, I see sensuality, shapes, colors, and textures. I love to see the way colors blend into each other, how shapes blend into each other and how forms create new shapes in the negative spaces, the definition of edges, or how one leaf or petal can become a landscape of it's own. With water it is the mysterious combination of liquid vs. solid, transparent vs. reflective, moving vs. still, power vs. tranquility. Anyway, my drooling over any of these things, causes me to take my camera and try to capture what I am seeing. I'm not trying to represent the object I am seeing - I'm trying to record (basically for myself) that moment of my inspiration. Later when I am looking at my pictures, when that image is separated from reality, I start to see other things. I begin to explore other ways to make this vision more intense or dramatic, by enhancing the abstractness or the colors, or by adding or subtracting elements.
I would like people to look at my work not as a representation of reality, for example, don't think "This is a picture of a tulip", rather this is a picture of something interesting and sensuous and colorful and makes me feel good, or Oh, I'd like to have clothing made of that, or I never really looked at a tulip before. I see things not so much as WHAT they are, as maybe HOW they are and how they make me feel. Why do I have to look? What am I looking for? What is it that draws me in? Am I looking at water or into it? How does one surface blend into another? Do leaf tips know how sensuous they are? How is water so powerful and also so serene, so hard and so soft, so solid and reflective and yet transparent? How can a flower petal or a leaf be so small and so magnificent?