MIRROR 003

Rather than keep blogging these, which would be tedious for both you and me, I am going to wait until I have accumulated enough that the world must admit I am an incredible genius or pervert or both, and put them in a gallery where they can be seen or ignored all at once instead of one at a time.  So this is the last you will see for a while.  I find I am already having a small battle between my natural tendency to detail and my intellectual drive to simplify so it will be interesting for me at least to see how this project proceeds. 

MIRROR 002

(Continued from Mirror 002) The source materials I am working from are not photos taken by men to arouse the prurient interest of other men.  They are self-portraits, and intentional.  Unlike most portraiture, the camera is clearly present, often central in the photo, so they are also self-portraits of the camera. There is a lot more content to these if you think about it.

MIRROR 001

Believe it or not I think seriously about Art sometimes.  I try to look at things most people aren't looking at and figure out ways of addressing them in the context of  "fine art."  I usually end up examining things which are discarded and discounted and try to depict them with the same care another artist might lavish on a mountain stream or a vase of flowers.  It seems that a new generation of young women now have the ability to photograph themselves naked in the bathroom mirror.  I find this appealing for the obvious reason, as well as the fact that it chronicles an intimate environment you rarely see - another person's bathroom with the junk on the counter and the shampoo bottles on the edge of the tub.  It is valuable also for the ways the women choose to depict themselves, the angle of the shot, what is shown and in what way, and the recursive element of it sometimes being a picture of a person looking at a picture of herself taking a picture of herself.  I like to take all those things and run them through my own filter and see if I can make a picture that has genuine artistic value.