How did my journey into the realms of Abstracted Reality begin?
I’d like to start by giving you a little background. I’m a musician. I’ve played the piano since I was nine years old and I’ve been teaching the piano for over twenty years. Along the way I ventured into composition and created a series of books for young pianists. The process of writing music and ultimately getting published was a challenge which I greatly enjoyed.
Having achieved this goal, I then started to look for a new and different creative challenge. Something visual seemed perfect as it would complement my musical background. However, my ability to produce anything on canvas which would contain the slightest kernel of artistic merit is nil. That narrowed down the field considerably to photography.
So, I decided to join the Dunedin Photographic Society and Dunedin Camera Club. Being a complete photographic novice, I looked, and listened and absorbed as much information as I possibly could. But for the first few years I really only dabbled. Frankly, I desperately needed some sense of direction and motivation!
Then a friend of mine suggested working with a theme. This simple suggestion proved to be very influential and kick started the first, of what was to become many photographic studies. I decided to begin with something familiar and used objects from around my home as the starting point for gathering material for these studies.
I soon discovered I wanted to go beyond presenting the various items in any ‘realistic’ way, and instead, began to experiment with and explore more unconventional methods of presentation and interpretation.
Several months and several studies later it was very clear to me that I was drawn to abstract imagery – everything I’d taken had been abstract. Furthermore, I hadn’t had to leave the house to create my images – I was managing to find enough material to keep me occupied, motivated and challenged at home.
Abstracted Reality was born!