On Using Photographs

A lot has been written on the use of photographs as references for creating a painting. Most painters know not to simply “copy” the photograph. Photo editing software now allows us to crop, select, transform and edit our photos in any way we want. We can change colours and forms and values; we can shift things around; we can cut things out. There are many web sites which explain more about this process.

These figurative paintings which I have been showing lately were based on photographs I took myself at different times, loaded them into my laptop, and looked at them in different ways to help me to arrive at an attempt to communicate something. For me my photographs are the first stage of the painting. That sounds simple but it is not meant to be taken simply. I am stimulated to take a particular photograph because something about the scene or person attracts me. The photograph I take may be “bad” but that doesn’t matter as long as it triggers the memory of what motivated me to take it it in the first place. I see an “embryo” painting in most photographs I take or I wouldn’t bother taking them. Ironically in most cases the embryo does not develop, but some do. Sometimes I return again and again to certain photos I have taken in the past. Why did I take that of a complete stranger? What was it that motivated me? Why do I keep going back to it?

In the past we would maybe have done a quick sketch but how can one quickly sketch a stranger, a fleeting moment in time, the way the light suddenly for a brief moment catches someone’s face or sleeve? To capture that pre-occupation of someone, that interior life which just for a few seconds I might glimpse a promise of?

So the camera is very much my friend and is as much an integral and personal part of the painting as any other stage – in fact it is possibly the most important part because it is that which captures the “essence” or “purpose” of my painting – the subject of it, the very beginning.

Now I know the plein air people will probably be bursting to counter this argument and I must admit that “plein air” work and also painting from life in the studio does provide a whole different experience and a wonderful experience, and I love that too.. Seeing colours “for real” is not like seeing those same colours on a computer screen But. all art is an interpretation. When I point my camera in a particular direction I am at the beginning of interpretation. I am not recording what actually “is”; I am recording a perspective on what “might be” and so for me, working from my own photographs produces a whole different range of fascinating and important options in my development as a painter.

Of course I am open to the notion that it may not be the same for everyone and as a final note I would like to add that this little blog entry is in no way an attempt to persuade, merely a desire to share in the true spirit of Learning Conversations.