My landscape photography has grown out of activities I would engage in anyway. I’ve always loved hiking, be it in the mountains, the woods, the desert — anywhere. These days I usually have my camera along. Sometimes I’ll be in an area I suspect might be interesting photographically, but usually I’m just in a place I want to explore. Either way, I don’t feel cheated if I take no pictures at all, and I’ve never had a bad time. But I have found a difference between productive and unproductive outings. The key predictor is whether I’m alone.
Posts by Steve Durbin
Forever almost falling: Interview with David Palmer
David Palmer’s show at the William Turner Gallery in Santa Monica opened last weekend. I’ve been intrigued by David’s work since I first saw it on his web site, and I’d been pestering him for an interview, which we finally did by email. I found it a fascinating view into the ideas and materials and process of David’s art making. It came out long, but it’s all good stuff. Just cowboy up and read it!
Major Motion Picture (Forever Almost Falling, 2006)
Steal this idea
Karl asked me last week: What am I trying to say with my Patina photographs of old paint on old cars? Within the context of what I had just been doing — starting to work with strong color and abstract patterns — I quite honestly answered that I didn’t know. But to work with the images, I had to retrieve them from a computer directory “Junkyard cars” that was paired with another one, both under the rubric “Patina-Altered Surfaces.” It wasn’t until browsing later that I was reminded of that second directory called “Rocks.”
To BW or not to BW?
Mark’s paintings yesterday inspired me to a flurry of work with the junkyard abstractions that I introduced last week. As I mentioned then, it’s the color as well as the abstraction that I find fascinating. To explore this a little bit systematically, I went through basic preparation of a number of the images to get a sort of baseline treatment. That involves a choice of overall contrast and saturation, and in one case a slight shift in color balance. Later I can investigate more complex possibilities that might involve manipulations of portions of individual images, or variations in the hue-tone relationships.
Inhale Audio, Exhale Art (by MJ Illingworth)
Current Affairs at the Bar
Art and music for me combine magically. Over the years, my experience in meditation has also brought my mind closer to breathing music so that it can flow through me in my art. Now music is integral to my painting process. The art produced is the output at the end of each audio journey. The art is not the music or the journey; it is the visual experience resulting from the mixture of the two.
Four views of bare limbs
I always find it interesting to see how different artists treat the same subject. Browsing the web, I’ve come across a number of images from several photographers that are close to some of mine in subject matter. Not only that, but they appear close in spirit as well. That evokes two reactions in me: disappointment that I’m not the first and only one to see the world in this unique and compelling way, and pleasure in finding others who seem to see the world in this unique and compelling way.
These are photographers I can learn from. Not only because I enjoy and respect their larger bodies of work, but because by comparing similar images I think I can learn more about my own work. I want to understand what distinguishes my own vision or style, which is not something I derive from principles, but have to discover by making images and looking at them.
