OVER THE COURSE OF MY PICTURE MAKING YEARS I have been accused, or at least it has been “suggested”, of being obsessed with the color red. The actual fact of the matter is that I do use the color red-when I see it-as visual element in many of my pictures. However, yet another fact of the matter is that I have never sought out or specifically look for the color red.
“I don’t have to have a single point of emphasis in the picture. It can be complex, because it’s so detailed that the viewer can take time and read it, and look at something here, and look at something there, and they can pay attention to a lot more.” ~ Stephen Shore
Like Shore, I make visually complex pictures for the same reason he seems to do so; pictures that are “so detailed that the viewer can take time and read it, and look at something here, and look at something there, and they can pay attention to a lot more.” In my own words, my pictures tend to evince, as a result of their complexity, a high degree of visual energy as seen across the field of a print. iMo, there is very little better than a splash of some repetitive visual element or another in a picture to get a viewer’s eye moving around that picture.
The screenshot included in this entry is used to illustrate another aspect of my use of the color red. That is, to my eye and sensibilities, I find it is quite interesting and somewhat surprising how the same visual element, when shared across a referent-diverse group of pictures can hold that seemingly disparate group together as a coherent body of work.