SkotoArt Blog
Photography, Art and Experiments
I came across this incredible fungi in our front entry and the veins of it looked as though they were gilt with gold. Tuff puffball mushroom (Scleroderma texense) is apparently what it is called. The way the sun hit this particular group of mushrooms made them look much more gold than the usual finds. I had to use them in a few experiments and the works below are the result.
These works were all created from the same two images that were merged to create something new and more complex. All were digitally manipulated and intended to work as a suite.
This piece began as a photo of a leopard moth that was on our stucco wall. For the most part, the image was black and white. I digitally overlaid it repeatedly and shifted the color and gradients to arrive at the image below.
Several friends have asked how my work should be framed or if it should. That really depends upon the look you’d like to have for your interior. Is your space more modern, traditional, eclectic? Do you like canvases or metal prints with no frames, simple and elegant frames that show off the artwork in a more modern fashion, or more ornate frames that give my digital work a more traditional feel? How you frame a piece is really a personal preference. As an artist, I enjoy seeing how someone who has purchased one of my works has used it in their home. I find it fascinating how different people’s tastes are and it is really interesting to see which of my works appeals to various people.
I am more than happy to provide suggestions to collectors of my work, based on how they’d like to present the piece in their home and show them options if they are unable to envision it for themselves. I’ve mocked up a few different styles of rooms, and include my art in various types of frames, to provide some inspiration of how my work can be displayed and how simple changes in frame, size, pairing, color and repetition can give different effects. I hope this is useful and if not, let me know what you’d like to see and I’ll do my best to find a solution that is right for you.
This is a combined piece where one half was created from a photo of a white brugmansia and the other from a photo of a passiflora blossom. I took both photos in our moon garden and I was not liking where each of the separate pieces were going, so I decided to combine the two of them and created something more unexpected and unique. For some reason it gave me the impression of early America, of celebrations of freedom, of aspirations of liberty and justice for all. According to Wikipedia, the term Liberty has several meanings… Liberty, in philosophy, involves free will as contrasted with determinism. In politics, liberty consists of the social and political freedoms enjoyed by all citizens. In theology, liberty is freedom from the bondage of sin. I can sense elements of each of these in this piece, hence the name.
I decided to work on a piece this evening that I started a little over a month ago, but I tend to get easily distracted and sometimes have to follow a tangential direction, which is why this one took so long. Sofia is a friend who kindly modeled for me so that I could have some photos to experiment with and this is the second piece from that shoot. I don’t believe Sofia has a twin, but for some reason I kept seeing her as a twin and that is where this idea stemmed from. The floral element is almost always present somewhere in my work, sometimes more literally than in others. This one uses a vintage wallpaper photo that I had taken a while back when we Jeff and I were in Barcelona.
For this series I decided to try something unnatural, a photo of mylar balloons from my Father-In-Law’s birthday party. The final result reminded me of a phoenix coming out of the flames, but I couldn’t decide on the final color, so I kept all five of them.
This work was created from a photo of a white canna in our moon garden. It was shot in the morning and sun was just rising behind the flowers and I thought the shadows it created were really very cool and enhanced the petals. The final piece reminded me of two male swans with their feathers all ruffled up, trying to impress a female with their bravado.
If you look closely, you’ll see the near translucent spider that was on the bloom, mirrored.
I decided to experiment with a photo I took a few months back of a white clematis flower, 'Madame Le Coultre', in our moon garden, as I love the simplicity and elegance of it. That said, I wanted to make this final piece more rich in color and shift it to that of a more common purple clematis jackmanii, as the deep blue hues of those are impressive.
This piece began as a photo of a giant purple cardoon flower, I love the texture of thistles, but I wanted to make this image abstracted from what it started as. I wanted to add some formality to the image in order to balance the wild feathery parts of the thistle flower. I may or may not have bene thinking about Halloween coming around the corner, so I landed on this variation below:
I am still having fun experimenting with banana leaves. I did a variations series that you can check out on my variations tab, with tones that stem from the original leaves, but in these I pushed the color further and introduced a touch of Dior rouge and lightened the background considerably. Overall, these feel lighter and the pale backdrop allows the colors to stand out more. Enjoy!
In the course of tidying up our pool courtyard, we were cutting off dead banana leaves and when I saw them lying in a pile on the concrete, I wondered if a photo of some of them might work as an interesting base for some digital explorations. I seriously doubt that many people have had so much fun with dead banana leaves, but I surely did. The interesting curves and textures that they have really lent themselves to some very cool outcomes. Below is an example of what resulted. I’ll be posting a variations series as well, so check out the variation tab on my site too. The title came from the four darker areas that reminded me of owls, but that’s just my own personal pareidolia.
This work was created from a photo of 'Madame Le Coultre', a Clematis variety that has stunning white blooms that we have in our moon garden. I went through numerous digitally manipulated iterations of this photo before settling on this particular final image. I specifically liked the colors that resulted and glow that emanated from the core of the piece.
I have done several different series of works with a photo of ball moss as a base image. I just find the complexity of ball moss so fascinating and I love the pattern variations that surface out of digital manipulation of such a beautifully organic design from mother nature.
These three pieces were all done from an old photo that I took a few years ago in our pool courtyard of this very cool feathery fern that climbs, called Japanese climbing fern (Lygodium japonicum). We had it in our garden for years, until the temps dropped in Austin to less than 15 degrees. I decided to use this as a short series and below is the result:
