Escapism Photography

Artist Statement

“A new reality” came about while watching the news. I so desperately wanted to escape topics of death, despair and US politics, as all of the images seemed so negative and I needed to look at something that would allow my mind to have an escape route. Therefore, creating these images freed me from the prescriptive, identifiable forms which we are bombarded with daily.

I began taking photos of ordinary things I found in my environment: wire, shadows, pea pods, grasses, etc. and isolated them from their physical surroundings by doing close ups of the object. I then took this collection of photos and combined some of them using Photoshop creating new environments for the objects.

This process led me to paint abstract images taken out of their original context which afforded me the same escape. Guided by the formal qualities of painting – line, shape, colour and form the original idea for the painting succumbs to the process and the process reforms the image creating a new reality and a great escape.