The Fisherwoman…
My mother, the original artist in the family, was an incredibly multi-talented person. Besides raising three children, she loved the sea and was known along the Connecticut shoreline as “Bluefish Patty” winning awards for her prowess catching these angry fish.
Her artwork ranged from creating over 60 years of handmade Christmas cards, making posters and promotional graphics for my father’s dental organizations, to meticulously handcarved stern board signs for boats. I was surrounded by her creativity. She was constantly experimenting on how to work with different materials and using them in imaginative ways to express an idea.
Recently, I came to a realization: I said to my brother, “Essentially, what mom was really saying to us through her art is what if...”?
What if you took these disparate materials or objects and created something completely new? What if you try drawing something with a new eye, a new approach?
Without consciously thinking of it, I was doing just that all of these years with my camera. I had taken the fervent study and incessant need to know about nature from my father’s science background, merged it with my mother’s inventive expression and poured them into my camera.
When I am out photographing, it’s essentially about experiencing what’s around me. The practice is based on being open to what comes my way, what reveals itself to me. I work most likely in the morning. The quiet and slowly enveloping light has a vitality of its own.
What catches my attention is when I see something that looks like something else, something strange, out of place, incongruous, surreal in some small way.
In my own way I am saying, “What if”?
“To describe is to kill, to suggest is to create.”