Shadows Passing

Artist’s Statement
“Shadows Passing” was initially envisaged as a series of black and white silhouettes centred around a visual response to our apparent contradictory desire to be both connected to others and to be left alone. Though this thought never vanished, as I bumbled my way through various constraints and explorations, familiar and previously unarticulated ideas emerged. Explorations included colour theory, along with conscious and unconscious references to 20^th Century art.

In the arena of familiar ideas, I strive to create images that capture a viewer’s attention through graphic simplicity, and then reward the patient viewer with possible avenues of thought. Another familiar idea is my deep appreciation for the random nature of the events in our lives.

In the arena of previously unarticulated ideas, I no longer know what is real and what is fiction in images. The way we consume images has also changed. As a result, the scale of images, an appreciation of their content and nuances, and the experience of viewing them have all been compromised. In “Shadows Passing” I want to create an experience that cannot be replicated digitally and is therefore best appreciated in-person.

Exhibition Layout
Shadows Passing was displayed in February 2024 at cSPACE – Marda Loop, Calgary as two different expressions of the same original forty-five digital photographs. Those photographs were chosen from thousands captured during multiple visits to multiple locations. In the end only photographs from a single location were used. Each of the forty-five original photographs were modified in two different ways to form two groups of thirty-nine images and two groups of six images. Each of the two 39 image sets were displayed as 3 rows of 13 images to form a visual field approximately 1m (39”) high x 5.7 m (12’ 8”) wide. Each image was 9” high x 12” wide and framed without glass (12 5/8” x 15 5/8”).

The sky and base in each image was chosen from a limited colour palette I designed. There are 24 colours in the colour palette for the “bright”. There are 12 colours in the colour palette for the “pastel” set. Below are 6 images from each of the 45 image sets.