This coleoptera (beetle) looks like stained glass to me, and is definitely more abstract than the previous coleoptera in this series (which was kind of a pop art affair).
Obviously, when you look at images like those in this series (which I am doing as part of a commissioned project) you are looking at a hybrid between photography and digital painting.
The extent to which my training lies more towards painting than photography was brought home to me in my answer to a question recently from a photography student:
Q: I now have to do an oral presentation on a photographer for one of my classes and I chose to do it on you. I pretty much have all the information I need from your blog and interview but do need to know what education in photography you have such as degrees or years completed at school. Also what years were you a professional photographer in New York? Are there any photos you could send me or I could find online of your work in New York? I only need maybe one or two shots from your New York stuff. Any help you give me would be greatly appreciated.
A: I have relatively little formal education in photography, although I did take a course in photography with Neil Rappaport at Bennington College. I also studied photography privately with Lilo Raymond.
I studied painting (also at Bennington) with Pat Adams and Philip Wofford, and at the Art Students League with teachers including Bruce Dorfman and William Pachner.
For what it’s worth, I have a degree from New York University in Computer Science and Math, and a law degree from Rutgers.
I worked out of a studio at 18th Street and Broadway in New York from 1978 through about 1990. Some of my photos of the World Trade Towers from the years I worked in NYC can be found here, here, here, and here.
All goes to show, painting, photography, or whatever: all knowledge and training is worth having in the end. On the other hand, things may be simpler than all that. As the 17th century Japanese poet Basho put it, “The first task for each artist…is to become one with nature.”
texbrandt
4 Dec 2007Many times over the years that I did art shows first with paintings and graphics and then with sculpture I was asked how long it took me to make a given painting or sculpture. The answer I finally came up with was “all of my life up to the moment of its creation.”
I never formally studied art but while working on my undergraduate degree at a Bible college I room with a music professor who painted and was into sketching from nature. Some of those images stored away after a trip to the Oregon coast still influence my art work more than 45 years later.
In the process of getting two master’s degrees though I never took an art course I was feeding my creative reservoir.
I like to say of my music (native american flute) that I have studied and jammed with the masters. The same thing is true of my other art work including my photography, I have studied and learned from the masters.
After getting your book on digital photography and looking at your pictures and reading your commentaries on them, I feel like I have studied with Harold Davis.
Indeed all knowledge and training is worth having in the end, given that it is that which opens the eyes of your soul. I like the idea that, “the role of the artist is not to reproduce the visible, but to make visible.”
Have been playing in Photoshop a bit- http://texbrandt.com/?p=34
Anyway I do appreciate all the good stuff you share here in your blog.
regards
Robert
Pingback: Photoblog 2.0: » Photoblog 2.0 Archive: » Coleoptera after Warhol