Almost 20 years ago, when I moved within the borders of the Adirondack Forest Preserve (aka, PARK), I looked forward, with eager anticipation, to spending significant time picturing the natural beauty of the Adirondacks and, for a few years, I did exactly that.
However, as I explored the Forest Preserve, I began to realize that the Adirondacks are not a place of wide-open panoramic-vista landscape beauty. Rather, like other NE forests, the Adirondacks is visually dominated by more intimate natural settings. The lone exception to that characteristic is making pictures from mountain tops of sweeping vistas of other mountain tops / ranges - a genre of Adirondack picture making that is performed to wretched excess (iMo).
Consequently, my picture making gaze migrated to more intimate natural settings (my ku work). Nevertheless, I also began to feel, un-satisfactory wise, that I was making pictures that were "picture postcard perfect". Despite the fact that my pictures were the equal of those made by other "serious" Adirondack landscape "masters", I couldn't escape the notion that I was making "generic" Adirondack pictures - not unlike those in this entry.
As those realizations began floating around in my skull - somewhat subconsciously rather than by conscious thought - I began to move from referent-oriented picture making to that of making pictures of whatever (discursive promiscuity) which exhibited visual qualities and characteristics - organization of color, shapes, lines, tones, framing, et al - that created a visual emphasis on / sense of visual energy. Visual energy which could be viewed independent of a picture's depicted referent.
Hence, the increasing emergence of my civilized ku work which is less linked to referent matter than it is to visual organization across the place of a 2-dimensional surface.
I write of all of this in order to explain why my submissions to the Water themed gallery exhibition will consist of pictures more like those in my previous 2 H2O entries than those in this entry ...
... if I were submitting pictures to a nature picture exhibition, I would be submitting pictures like the ones in this entry - pictures which are referent-centric. However, the call for submissions I am responding to is from a photo gallery which, I am certain, would also be happy to be called an art gallery. That is to write that the juror for the exhibition will be looking for qualities in a picture which transcend that of the depicted referent as well as exhibiting a manner of looking at the referent (water) from a new conceptual perspective.