Sometimes you find your own voice through observing your responses to other people’s work.

One of my visual journals is a collection of images that I appreciate. When you bring enough images together new patterns emerge. This was certainly the case for me when I sifted through my favorite photographs of nudes and found a thread that tied together works by Jerry Uelsmann, Emmet Gowin, Harry Callahan, and Ruth Bernhard. All four of the photographs I had selected used double exposure to merge the figure with the landscape. It wasn’t that these works were typical of each artist’s work; Jerry Uelsmann who would be best know for this kind of work offers many such images; Harry Callahan was highly experimental and offered only a handful of these kinds of treatments; Ruth Berhard produced fewer; Emmet Gown only produced even fewer. What had been revealed through the process of creating this collection was my own interest in a specific kind of imagery and a particular theme.

Overtly stated in my own photographs of nudes in varying degrees of transparency, the theme of man and nature as one runs through all of my work. Whether subtly or dramatically, directly or indirectly, I’m interested in all types of imagery that challenges conventional notions of separateness and offer a vision of unity.

What shared themes can you identify when observing your own influences?

Read more about my influences here.

Category: influences
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Despite a challenged relationship with the church, I still find the content in the Bible and the good acts it inspires extremely inspiring. I had strong spiritual feelings as a very young child and they’re still with me today. Many works of art inspired me, none more than Matthais Grunewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece. It’s a complex masterpiece. Two panels in particular mean a great deal to me. The Resurrection epitomizes the word beatific – transcendently wise, compassionate and fulfilled. The Temptation of St Anthony is a riveting portrayal of a supreme test of that state and how it can survive and even be strengthened by confrontations with the darkest negativities.

I see images like Grunewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece and I feel called to try and rise to some small measure of this greater state of being. Achieving this depth of perspective and strength of expression is a primary goal of my life/art. For me, making art is a call to learn and put that learning into practice.

Here’s a link to an good post on Grunewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece.

Learn more about the Isenheim Altarpiece on Wikipedia.

Learn more about Mathais Grunewald on Wikipedia.

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While this image is officially titled Apple, New York City, 1964 it’s often referred to in my father’s studio as ‘The Galaxy Apple’. Countless people’s first impression of this image is that they’re looking at a galaxy. That was mine. It was also Robert Glenn Ketchum’s, who was half way through his dissertation presentation, when he realized it wasn’t a photograph of a galaxy but of an apple. Even after you see the apple, the impression of a galaxy persists.

This is one of the photographs that got me into photography. I love that a literal transcription can also describe something more than itself. The power of metaphor is more powerfully expressed in this photograph than any other I can think of. What’s more, the way the metaphor unites both the terrestrial and the celestial – the macrocosm and the microcosm are seen as one. (I don’t think it’s an accident that my father’s first retrospective was titled The Wise Silence, a line borrowed from Ralph Waldo Emerson.)

The printing of this image reinforces the metaphor. It’s dark. So dark, in fact that in some places you can’t visually separate the contour of the apple from the dark background. Other printers might have held all the detail there was to hold in this negative. Unexpectedly, and wisely, dad didn’t. I have always appreciated my father’s consummate ability to transcend his technique and follow the call of his intuition. Rather than offering expected results he consistently delivers unexpected solutions, not for the sake of novelty or surprise, but because he was called to serve a more powerful inner poetry.

(There’s a lot to be learned from looking at originals, which is why we look at masterworks from my collection in all of my  digital printing workshops.)

Find my comments on other Masterworks In My Collection here.

Learn more in my digital printing workshops.

Category: influences, Masterworks In My Collection
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Is there a pattern to the artist’s above? Yes. They’re all influential to me.

Who are your influences? If you’re an artist you hear this question all the time. Many of us resist the temptation to answer as our answers may lead others to a poor choice of words – derivative. The reality is we’re all being influenced all of the time. It’s interesting to separate your enduring influences (the ones that stand the test of time) and your current influences (the most recent). For instance, I just saw the Louise Bourgeoise exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC. It’s influencing me. Will I do something with that influence immediately? Will that influence stay with me long enough to become significant? Time will tell. I also visited my favorite gallery in the Metropolitain Museum in NYC – the Rockefeller wing containing artifacts from primal cultures typically used for sacred or ceremonial functions. I go there every time I visit the museum. Every time I’m thrilled. The influence of this kind of art has been and will be with me my whole life.

I just entered into the arena environmental sculpture. (See video here.) How long has this been building? Since I was one year old. Who was the earliest influence? Calder. Who’s the most recent influence? McCall. Who are the other sculptures who have been influential to me? Find some of them in the Sculpture section of my AStore. You’ll find a clear pattern – and some surprises.

Who are your influences? Comment here!

You can see my new work and hear me talk about it during my Annual Exhibit 8/2-3. Find out more here.

Watch the video in my previous post here on this blog.

Then stay tuned for the online release of the gallery of images the video relates to.

Stay tuned for online releases all weekend long.

Category: Images, influences, Sculpture
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