Statement
Statement for An Absorbent Eye exhibition: April 15 – May 27, 2016
I abstracted these photographs of sycamores trees by cropping out everything but their trunks: removing the background, branches, roots and ground; removing all relationship to the sky and earth; and thus, removing them from time and space/place. I’ve printed them on archival paper, 17 inches wide and 10 feet long. The rectangular shape of the photographs and abstract forms reference painting while the long, thin format reintroduces the idea of the tree. I chose sycamore trees for their myriad variations of color and shapes of bark.
This show is a different approach from the series “Painted Trees” shown in 2010. In that series, photographs of trees included the backgrounds and by using the camera as a brush stroking the landscapes with a downward swipe, the abstraction of the image was made.
