Umbra – Penumbra Series

Working photographically for many years, I continue to explore and record my surroundings and environs today, mostly with an iPhone. In the past, I would re-interpret my photographs through mixed media works and installations. Currently, I am translating light, shadow, and movement, properties so basic to photography, through oils on canvas. My daily photographs serve as a starting point for the Umbra – Penumbra series, (the darkest area of a shadow - the shadow area that shifts into light). The meaning from one visual language (the source medium) to another visual language is changed by the action of painting. The viewer adds the third aspect of the visual communication process, interpretation.
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Summer's Night in the Midwest _ Oil on canvas _ 48" X 48" _ 2020
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We Are But Dust and Shadows _ Oil on canvas _ 48" X 48" _ 2020
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Christmas Night in a Small Town _ Oil on canvas _ 48" X 48" _ 2019
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Traversing Paths _ Oil on canvas _ 48" X 36" 2017

Newton’s Third Law:
For Every Action, There is an Equal and Opposite Reaction

Each material an artist uses is different in its surface response, just as each sound we hear or image we see sends a flood of information to our synapses to be interpreted and decoded into something tangible and understandable. According to Sheila Ceccarelli “To become ‘articulate’ and able to understand and manipulate the material world there has to be time invested into the exploration of materials and experimentation with a broad range of media.”

Play is essential to a ‘creative’ and as such, I spent many years framing the world through a camera lens, making adjustment to control light, speed and angle. Here, I am able hold medium in hand and react to the interaction of the selected tool to the surface of substrate; it is an immediate response most often beginning without deliberation. Experimentation proves the creative calculation a challenge, forcing success through disaster.

Tempo Markings

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Oil on paper, charcoal, graphite, water soluble crayon, RF paint stick 9.75" X 19" _ each 2019

Piscean Fossil

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Oil on paper, charcoal, graphite, water soluble crayon, RF paint stick 10" X 14.5" _ each 2019