I am one of those people that has a great deal of difficulty
coloring outside the lines. Things are very specific to me and lines are boundaries
to be respected. The problem is that I greatly admire those that can and do
color outside the lines.
I know some people do not need to color outside the lines
and that is fine. I just need something more than the box that life put me into
and this is my way of finding that something.
Many years ago I owned a book on modern art that explained that modern art was the result of destroying and reconstructing. I found that
concept very interesting. Actual to a degree I found it liberating because it
gave me an acceptable justification for expressing my deep desires to color
outside the lines which I greatly needed.
It took a very long time and even now I have difficulties.
However, I have discovered digital software that will assist me and I have
taken advantage of that software for some sixteen years.
At the time I was using Photo Draw 2000 I wasn’t sharing my
work with but one person other than Janet, Robbie Britt, a creative writing instructor
at Tarrant Community College in Fort Worth. Robbie was very encouraging but I
thought the work was too personal to share with others. They both came from a
very difficult time in my life. Finally this past year I shared eight of the
images from Lost Souls with the curator of the Katy Contemporary Art Museum.
Anna blew me away with her comments. We both agreed that the images were not
salable because I had started with photographs that were not mine but she was
very encouraging to begin again with my own photographs.
I doubt that I will do
that because I hope never to return to that dark place that had inspired the
images.
I have continued to upgrade the software to programs like
Nik and Topaz and tried several others that I have dropped along the way. Each
new upgrade has given me new approaches. The farther I go the more I enjoy
coloring outside the lines.
I still do straight photography, but more and more I am
seeing photographs as simply starting points and trying to discover new
direction for my images. I do not make records of the steps; I simply keep
working and being inspired by the possibility of the next step. I still lead
the process and often I abort and start over or even abandon an image as not
going where I need it to go. I may do several images of a photograph before I feel that it is what I want. And even then I may come back to it days or weeks later because I feel there is more that could be done.
I have recently posted to Facebook some of my images of
fireworks. The manipulated images have much more excitement than the straight
photographs from which they were made. I just ordered 25 16x20 prints of mostly
manipulated images to hang in the studio for the next open house.
The attached photo was taken of a life sized crucifix in a
Catholic Cemetery in Galveston. I have photographed the crucifix on a number of
occasions and have done dozens of manipulated images from the photographs. This
one was mostly done in Topaz Studio using a new technique of layering and using
masking to more accurately control the image. Not really a new technique, just
one that I had not been using with my manipulations. Every step gives me a
completely different image, a different feel to the image. The goal of all is
to depict the suffering of Christ. They just all do it differently.
Life is
simply very, very good when I can color outside the lines.
i love your images.
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