projections and distortions

After teaching photography and taking photographs for a few years I simply became a little bored at the process.  It took a collaboration with a student of mine to re-charge my imagination around the medium.  We began to experiment with ways to distort the negative and so began a new journey into the photographic image. 

For a few years I was driven to take photographs with a super fine high contrast 35 mm film, tech-Pan, and then to twist the negative inside the enlarger bellows.  The effect created these beautifully morphed figures and landscapes that bulged into the frame then slipped away into faded, blurred corners. Furthermore as this experimentation developed I became further interested into projected images onto the models I was photographing. 

Together, the projections and the distortions drove much of my work for a period.  It also became the mechanism with which I entered painting.  The photographic process combined with art making leading to the making of nudes, heads, portraits, and eventually landscapes. 

Once the idea of distortion and projection became more fully realized I was drawn to any number variations of distortions and projections .  I textured the photographic image, by printing through scratched and damaged surfaces, and taking photographs of myself fisheye mirrors.  

These photographs were finally combined with colour and texture of painting and used in concert with lithography to deconstruct structures with washes.