ON SEEING
Everything begins with looking.
For more than fifteen years, my work has been an ongoing investigation into what prolonged observation can reveal. I am fascinated by the shapes, rhythms, geometric relationships, light, and movement that exist within the landscape but often remain unnoticed. I am not interested in simply describing what is in front of me. I am interested in discovering what becomes visible when we really look.
I am drawn to nature because it is never still. Water moves, light shifts, forms appear and disappear, and relationships exist for an instant before they are gone. The camera allows me to isolate those moments, but observation is only the beginning.
My process is also one of experimentation. I question what an image needs and what it can do without. I add, remove, combine, simplify, and sometimes bring several photographs together. Each decision is guided by the same question: Does this bring the image closer to what I experienced and felt?
Over time, this process has led my work increasingly toward abstraction. That was never a predetermined destination. I am not searching for abstraction for its own sake. Abstraction is simply the consequence of removing what is no longer essential—of allowing light, movement, atmosphere, rhythm, and memory to take precedence over literal description.
The work has changed considerably over the years, from recognizable observations of the landscape to images in which the landscape can almost disappear. Yet I don't see these as separate investigations. They are part of one continuing pursuit and are driven by essentially the same question:
How far can a photograph move away from description while remaining emotionally true to what was seen and felt?
For me, literal reality is where the work begins. Emotional reality is where I am trying to arrive.
A photograph can faithfully record what something looked like and still fail to communicate the experience of being there. Conversely, an image can move considerably away from literal description and somehow feel more truthful to the experience.
The finished image is not a different reality. It is an attempt to reveal the emotional reality that exists beneath visual description—a reality that cannot always be contained within a single photograph.
I don't know where this investigation will lead. I only know that I want to continue looking, questioning, experimenting, removing, and discovering.
The search is not for abstraction.
It is for the image that gets closest to what I felt.