Whenever I write about my artwork, I struggle to discover some theme or idea that encompasses everything that I have done. Since I created all of these images, they share a common visual language giving them a similar look, but the meaning behind the images and their ultimate impact is very different based on the subject matter. For the last four years, I have taken photographs of two subject matters, My Home and Silver Sands State Park. I have been working on both of these projects simultaneously, and they are both still in progress.
I started photographing My Home first. It began with still lives in my kitchen, which grew into some interiors and then exteriors in the yard. None of these images are from public places, so they are specifically images of the personal spaces in which I exist. When taking images of My Home, I approach the subject matter with a specific point of view. I am interested in not just capturing an aesthetically pleasing image, but one that comments on the idiosyncratic elements in my life.
I started photographing Silver Sands State Park two years ago. It started as a class assignment that I have continued. The images I have taken at Silver Sands tend to be aesthetically pleasing or pretty pictures. While I would like to make images that are about more than beauty, as someone recently pointed out to me, it may be that I do not experience Silver Sands in the same way that I experience My Home. Silver Sands is a public space as opposed to the private space of My Home.
Overall, this difference between the way I take images of My Home and of Silver Sands tends to be the reason for my inability to discover a theme that encompasses all of my work. At this point, I am satisfied with the idea that I experience these two places in different ways, and therefore the images have a different impact.
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