West Slope Photo Project

Artist Statement

The West Slope project was formed from a culmination of events.

The imagery I created during these six years didn’t come from any plan of ever doing anything with them, let alone a fine art project. The imagery I created was simply an impulsive reaction to documenting the natural beauty I witnessed all around me. They are vignettes of the wild, natural, world I connected with emotionally and spiritually. 

I hadn’t taken a single photograph in several years. I had spent nearly half my life trying to make the art form I loved be my profession. It wasn’t that I lacked talent, training or effort. It was simply the fact that I was more of an artist than a businessman. So at the age of 30 I transitioned to a career as a graphic designer and art director. As I focused on this new path my photography took a back seat and I became very critical of the photographs I made. As I focused on my new path my edge for the capturing photographs also faded and eventually I stopped picking up the camera. 

When I moved to the western slope of Colorado I was so inspired by the people and places around me that I started taking pictures again. The tool I inevitably defaulted to use to capture my amazing and new-to-me backyard was my iphone camera. In hindsight this makes sense to me. Because I was subconsciously making a decision to not take any picture taking too serious. After a few years capturing images with my iphone of my jaunts and adventures in this new backyard. I decided to look back through the images. In doing so I noticed something about them. I noticed that the freedom I found using the camera on my phone had allowed me to be free of my own biases, criticisms and constraints and in the process I had learned to see creatively in a new way. Portraying what I saw in a way that is better connected to my emotional response to the landscapes I was observing. A new way of seeing arose that showed expression and emotion to that beauty.

July 2018