So my angst; I feel that I have been working predominately in one style, what I have termed documentary-style landscape photography, very representational work, and now very intrigued and investigating a completely different direction in my artwork. I could rationalize that this might be confusing to my collectors, but I have so few, would this really matter? I do take some solace while talking to some friends recently about this and one remarked that they did not see any issues as my work has at its foundation been very conceptual, and this is just another twist. cool.
Perhaps like many others, the real limitations as to what we create are mostly self-imposed. So to expand my paradigm I have been re-reading some of my earlier monographs of Willem de Kooning and Arshile Gorky of the Abstract Expressionists movement and other contemporary abstract writings on-line. What resonates with me in this regard as to the fluidity and mash-up of abstraction, figurative and representative paintings by de Kooning, who remarked “What’s the problem? This is all about Freedom“.
Reading that quote from de Kooning in the middle of the last century and then about the YBA (Young British Artists), who emerged in the late 1980s into the 1990’s. Goldsmiths College of Art (London) played an important role in the development of the YBA movement. Goldsmiths had for some years been fostering new forms of creativity through its courses which abolished the traditional separation of media work into painting, sculpture, printmaking etc. “The (YBA) era is marked by a complete openness towards the materials and processes with which art can be made, and the form that it can take.” I find that pretty inspirational and much less rate-limiting as to my conceptual options.
In my last post, the artwork I featured was an attempt at something that was extremely vague and ambiguous as to the subject as well as size focusing more on the values of color, mass and structure. So in thinking about the ideas discussed above, I selected one of my new artworks that had perhaps a bit less vagueness with the inclusion of the round cloud like shapes that are more organic, perhaps inspired by Gorky’s and de Kooning’s abstract landscapes and working from nature.
Meanwhile, in parallel I continue to work on my Memory Pods series from the body of work I created in the Spring (semi-abstraction?). I took a little break between watching and photographing my subjects and now I am working the images. I may have more news about this series soon.
Cheers & stay safe,
Doug
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My other exhibitions and workshops:
The Photographers Eye’s gallery exhibition, Living and Photographing in the Time of COVID-19, group virtual exhibition that includes two of my diptychs from the series A Developing Crisis. This online exhibition is from May 8th through August 1st, 2020 (tomorrow).
Medium Photo 2020 Workshop: Developing a Creative Book workshop that I will be leading, is now rescheduled for September 24 – 27th, 2020, a four-day extended weekend workshop in San Diego.
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Featured artwork; Fresnel Coefficient 5211 (Quantum Elements), copyright 2020, Douglas Stockdale
Singular Images 