Artist Statement

ARTIST STATEMENT


"Artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Over my career, I have created work in a variety of art media: in acrylic and oil paint, in graphite and colored pencil, in fiber and suede, and in anodized and precious metals. I have used photographs to inform this earlier work with ideas about color, tone, form, line, and texture. Now, though, I turn to photography for its ability to capture light as it describes and delineates the environments through which I travel.

The photographs I capture share a resemblance to what exists, not an exact likeness, for a photograph is incapable of exactly reproducing the reality of light. A photograph is always an interpretation. Machines, with their algorithms defined by current stylistic parameters, can automatically interpret the data about the existent light captured by the camera. Other machines can use the interpreted, developed data to generate an artifact, the photographic print. An artist, the photographer who captured the image, can control the processing of camera data and the production of the print artifact, as well. Only with the photographer executing complete control of the process can the original concept of the image be evoked. I perform the development and printing processes of my work so as to create a work that satisfies my original vision.

I strive for photographs that blur distinctions between art and life. When I photograph, I willingly abandon life to my art. I have studied so many media and worked with so many materials that when I photograph, memories are awakened of the pleasurable experiences of art; perhaps it is a color, perhaps a form from a favorite composition. My travel, then, takes me to places composed of artistic compositions. The compositions are everywhere; awaiting only illumination and discovery. When I came to realize this, my world was forever changed into a place of visual delight. Elements of art surround me. I no longer go out to photograph with an idea in mind. I wander and looked around me to discover photographic compositions. Observing carefully has enriched my life. And because I am an artist who presents my photographs to the public, it is possible to enrich the lives of others with my photographic observations.

What better medium to organize objects and environments into two-dimensional compositions than photography? Photography, with its ability to evoke real experience, has made the boundary between art and reality indistinct. The brushwork and blending of the painting medium as well as the linear and textural aspects of drawing can be photographically captured on surfaces such as the distressed patina of old trucks. The tactile and fluid qualities of fiber and the reflective qualities of metalwork can be found and photographed in liquid surfaces and shiny automobiles. Photography provides me a comfortable correspondence with my various art forms. Experience with these earlier arts has made me realize the phenomenal potential of the photographic medium.

And what of the large-scale of my photographs? Scale affects my creative process as well as my printmaking process for prints must be adjusted in contrast, saturation, and sharpness according to their size. I do not want to peer through the small hole of a mat into the world of the photograph. I want the photograph to become the world, to transport me to the expansive space in which I discovered my composition. I want to sting my viewers with the emotional and artistic qualities of the world I have presented them.


All images and content of this site © 2012 Dottie Campbell