Light, Glass, and Pigment 09-14-2014, 01:22 PM
For most of my life, my art medium of choice was drawing. In my teens, I was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which caused steady decline in the abilities of my hands. I attempted workarounds as my condition worsened, but found myself increasingly unable to cope with the pain that drawing caused.
I sought out alternate creative routes, and had some success experimenting with more comfortable ways of holding a paintbrush. If I loosened my grip and avoided using my thumb, the pain was much more manageable, but the lack of control was frustrating until I learned to stop fighting for it. My paintings became less detailed and more abstract as I increasingly embraced these attributes.
I grew to love the untamed rivers, splashes, and swirls of paint, so I began taking photos of these phenomena with my phone. I warped the paper and played with light and shadow to transform my simple paintings into different worlds. I fashioned a macro lens for the phone from a dismantled laser pointer and dove deeper into these worlds of paint. I enjoyed the extreme warping that introduced a dreamy, surreal nature to the pieces, but it was obvious that my exploration was severely limited by low resolution and quality.
I was eventually able to purchase a Pentax K-5 II, and I’ve hardly put it down since. It’s been exciting to have a creative outlet that isn’t so physically demanding! My new appreciation for the abstract has transitioned to painting with light itself. I've quickly learned that I love the textures that emerge from manipulating light and capturing those intimate details at close range, exploration best suited for prime lenses and macro. I also have bellows that I would be eager to pair with a reversed 50mm lens!
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Post #1 by azuring
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