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Artist Statement
“Into The West”
In America, during the second and third quarter of the 19th century, there existed a group of artists who became known as The Hudson River School of painting. They represented the American West and other areas not only to portray a landscape, but to convey an idea of a new land with new possibilities. These painters followed the call of Ralph Waldo Emerson to “ignore the courtly muses of Europe” and create a new and distinctive view of America. I have found myself to be drawn to the somewhat romantic, passionate representations of the land created by Frederic Church, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran and others who used color and a heightened representation of light to convey their ideas, including the notion that there were environmental consequences to man’s conquest of the wilderness.
The photographs that comprise “Into The West” are executed in a manner that highlights a sense of discovery. They are about seeing things newly, as if through the lens of a telescope for the first time. I hope that these images allow the viewer to feel the grandeur of nature as well as elements that exist within nature as a result of human intervention, for better or worse. The colors, texture and quality of light are borrowed from the Hudson River School to create an image that hopefully goes beyond landscape into the realm of emotion and metaphor. |
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