Responding to Randy

Randy Newman, the great composer and recording artist, has a knack for dealing with what a friend of mine calls “things we’re pretending not to know”.

He did so in a song called “I’m dead but I don’t know it”, an autobiographical piece in which he laments the reality that “Every record that I make’s like every one before.....just not as good!.” It prompted me to think about my photography and how easy and natural it had become to keep producing well composed and well executed large color photographs that observers describe as “looking like paintings”. Easy and natural.....a comfortable rut.

And so, with Randy’s words ringing in my ears, I set out to push myself as far out of my rut as possible. Deciding which direction to push was easy. I know that my passion is abstraction. Normally, my process is to look for the abstraction I see in the “as found” world. This time, in order to force myself farther, I chose to work in a makeshift studio setting. My goal was to photograph a group of objects near and dear to me with the objective of rendering them in an unfamiliar, puzzling or mysterious way. The result of that exploration is this exhibit.

I hope that those of you familiar with my work will see characteristics and image qualities that you recognize expressed in images you do not. As usual, all images are printed full frame, as exposed.