Road Trip. To CO.
Durango & nearby Mesa Verde
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A windy damp gray day – good time for a visit to a national park since there were only about 5 other 21st century people there.
Early inhabitants.
Wild horses.
I had not been to Mesa Verde in over a decade, way before devastating fires had transformed thousands of acres of trees, grasses, ancient structures.
These images of the altered landscape, so different from the last time I was there.
Homage to Hokusai
Homage to Gauguin
Why do so many viewers feel compelled to put labels on images that are non-figurative, non-representational? Is it too upsetting to be confronted by uncertainty? Too challenging to some basic or fictional human characteristic that demands recognizability & the known? Why don’t they just look? Let the image tell its own story? It doesn’t seem to matter whether the viewers are “just folks” or artists who create in the non-representational realm themselves: most, though certainly not all, people seem to need the identifiable.
We are familiar with aspects of why people create abstractly, perhaps having to do with issues of detachment, etc., etc.; but such psychologizing isn’t really relevant. These are questions about the present role of representation. Even if we are using photographic means of capture, we see the underlying anomalies which make realism so fascinating. The surface is just that, a skin over other layers that tell different stories.
Comments, please.
mystery and ambiguity:
wander in the realm of what is not
shake up the ordinary and mundane circumscribed by the rules of day-to-day
We stared at shimmering images rising off the desert floor. . .
We played a round of golf, hitting the balls as far as possible, despite the fact that we were hampered by the gusts of wind blowing against us across the rough terrain, our hearts beating rapidly from the exertion . . .
We caught sight of a plane passing overhead flying unsteadily in the blustery weather. . .
Later we rested along the riverbank watching the water churning around the rocks. . .
And while considering this, we gazed at the smoke rising lazily from our cigarettes. . .
Turbulence is a series of digital drawings that explores the unrest and commotion occurring in a mythic landscape. (see Turbulence Page for more info.)
What is the story? How do I begin? I am always seeing even if not looking. These days I’m most interested in strange rock formations or ruins, areas evocative of ancient hidden stories. The landscape is a text.
I was hiking in the Bisti Wilderness in New Mexico when I made these photographs:
Images like these might become part of the Badlands series, where I begin with photographs made while exploring in the isolated terrain in an almost trance-like state. I record many images, feeling the intensity of the surroundings. Later, I select a few photos and layer them. I make selections randomly in the various layers, cutting out the upper layers. It’s the opposite of collage where one adds material. In this series I pull imagery from underneath. Then I manipulate these selections and make marks using a personal vocabulary I have developed over years of drawing. I also apply various wave filters and other wonderful Photoshop amenities to reveal untold narratives, even though I don’t know what the stories are.
This is a completed imagestory, Badlands #15:
Altered Landscapes is a site dedicated to images and ideas related to land and landscapes (interior and exterior), environment and terrain, mapping and cartography, e.g., all things committed to such concerns, urban and rural, real and imaginary. My overall goal is to communicate the enthusiasm I feel for exploring the world of the imagination through the creation of images. I look forward to your comments and questions.
I will be adding images as I create them, or as I pull them from my archives, giving backstories and information about them. They will be mostly my digital or hand-made drawings, or photographic work; and I’ll include galleries from various series. I’m an advocate of image manipulation and the investigations that are provoked by digging into the nature of the digital terrain. Appearances of images may be very “realistic” or surreal or non-representational or minimal, all depending on the energies at play.