Letting go of Reality

I have an artist friend who said the longer he was in art the more abstract he became. That is certainly true with artists such as Pablo Picasso and Duchamp. And I can set myself heading that way. It first showed up in photography. And on some levels it has always lurked there because I love textures and detail photos like the ones above and below of ice.

But lately with the discovery of post processing it has shown up in use of color and extreme cropping. And I have just begun to experiment with layering.

Grand Canyon Dawn

At first I just began to push color a little bit like the picture of dawn in the Grand Canyon above. But every editing section began to more and more be an exploration in extremes.

Fire Escape

Shadow Dancers

And lately I have found myself wanting to take my photos, as I have done for years, and turn them into paintings. But now it is not the realistic canyons but the abstract compositions I want to paint. It is no longer about rendering the subject faithfully or even in a visionary manner but rendering the feeling and emotion.