What a weekend. Scratch that..What a week. In the last week I've installed at 2 galleries, done an Art Walk and helped host an artists reception.
Aside from the usual nonsense in life, gallery openings still make me a bundle of raw energy and nerves. Wondering what I did will or will not impact people, the old merchant in me (I did retail management for some 8 years in one of my career sidetracks) wonders if I have the right mix and have it merchandised correctly.
This week a cousin of mine, Ed Labernik who is quite the accomplished watercolor artist dropped me a note. He wrote: "... They don't call us starving astists for nothing but the recognition is always nice. You have some fabulous work on your website, the watercolor photography is most interesting, indeed, but the impressionistic work is truly outstanding. I've always held the impressionistic painters in my highest esteem, I wish I had the guts to paint like them..." (Sorry Ed, I am certain you didn't expect to be quoted here but it put me on a path of discovery today- to the reader of this blog, I am sparing you readers the request for his Mom's donut recipe even though it will put a krispy kreme to shame). Of course the odd twist in all of this is that Ed is a watercolor artist that does beautiful detailed paintings that have the look of photo-realism, I am a photographer that creates impressionistic images in his pictures. Go figure the genetic twists in our gene pool to come up with those trait twists. But I digress....
Back to the shows, the big show is one entirely composed of fine art photographers, most of it very straightforward photography. As I watched the people at the show most spent more time viewing, pondering or whatever those images that were done on watercolor paper in a very impressionistic manner....often with the help of the various tools in Paintshop Pro and Photoshop CS. Those are the images that I get the most enjoyment and satisfaction out of. When I paint I am more of an impressionist than a realist. For me to be able to take that same sensibility and apply it to a photograph to create new images makes life fun. I think the appeal of impressionistic paintings over realistic paintings is that the use of color, line, shadow etc makes one bring more of their own experiences and memories to fill in the gaps making it more of an emotional experience than a scientific one. My guess, what do I know?
This evening I went for a walk along the river. The intent was to get pictures of the fading sun and hopefully a moonrise. The moon rise will need a lot of work, mostly because the moon rose over an industrial complex instead of the mountains where I wanted it. Damn it mutha nature, could you cooperate once and put the moon or sun where I want it?
About half way into it I became totally enthralled with the way the sun was dancing across the various bamboos and stuff along the rivers edge. Even the way the sunlight lit the bottom of the bridge was pretty cool. So I started shooting with the intent of creating some impressionistic images. And here you go....a few of what I enjoy doing the most
Sunset Bridge
San Gabriel River Sunset
