CLANDESTINO PORTRAITS APR16
EARLY WORK:
PERSONAJES CLANDESTINOS ESCONDIDOS EN LA LUZ, COLORES E SOMBRAS DE LA OBSCURIDAD
(Clandestine Personages Hiding in the Light, Colors and Shadows of the Dark)
JACKSON is my name, REFRACTION is my game!
I am a person obsessed with color and light that I have been meditating on and exploring for a lifetime. I think of my current project as photography of the imaginary, informed by abstract expressionism. My images are intended to stimulate inner feelings from shock to deep pleasure. through expressions of light, color and form.
PERSONAJES CLANDESTINOS, are my latest effort in that regard.
To me, some evoke images of ancient pre-Columbian deities in full regalia like those found in codices. Because they existed in the imaginations of the artists depicting them while assembling the components they were supposed to represent, as they were imagined, who's to say they’re not hiding in my images camouflaged by color, light and shadow as I have imagined them? Have I somehow discovered their “seeing" technique?
An imagination will find faces, forms, god spirits, and the like resplendent in their gleaming regalia, along with their assistants and the perpetual presence of a camarilla of demons and spies. Others are camouflaged by the color and shadows of the underworld.
My MAJOR influences in this project are the late, great Bob Bilyeu Camblin and Mexican surrealist Alejandro Colunga. Others in the Mexican school that have been a great influence are Chucho Reyes, Cesar Agusto Martinez, Eloy Tarcisio, Francisco Toledo, Pedro Coronel, Rodolfo Morales, Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siquieros, Rufino Tamayo.
Charles Burchfield, for his paintings of spooky forests and Henri Rosseau, whom hid animals in his, are also major influences in crafting my abstractions. M.C. Escher and Pedro Friederberg, particularly regarding the series that emanate from the results of their fusion.
Major photographic influences are the late great Texas and King Ranch photographer, John L. Bintliff, who taught me that anything could be photographed and Belgian photographer, Jacques de Selliers, who taught me to do a good job of it.
In my collection are also abstractions and colors that may tout Miro, Arp, Hoffman, compositions that mimic while suggesting Picasso, or Ken Price, Man Ray, Francis Bacon, Arshile Gorky, Salvador Dalí, Willem de Kooning. Munchian screams, Boschian tableaus, Basquiat whimsy, Paul Jenkins spontaneity, the fluidity of Henry Moore, to name a few of the artists that have influenced my eye, all found alluded to in colorful refractive abundance in the suggestive squiggles of color and light, that fascinate me so.
Mark Tobey, James Brooks, Sam Francis, William Bazotes, Robert Motherwell, Larry Bell, Franz Kline, Yves Klein, Jean Paul Riopelle, Barnett Newman, Jeff Koons, Norman Bluhm, Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, Cy Twombly, Mark Rothko, Max Ernst, Andre Masson, Giorgio de Chirico, Edouardo Paolozzi, Jose Maria Cundin, Peter Paone, Lucas Johnson, Earl Staley, James Surls, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Stout, Dick Wray, Charles Schorre, David Adickes, Kristi Karll and the conceptualist Art Guys, are ALL in my images in one form or another.
I feel that I have “broken through” a metaphysical barrier in my longtime obsession of photographing refracted color and light and am now somehow communing with those I have learned to recognize after a decade of “seeing” them, now revealing themselves to me as this project develops. They seem to be in another dimension looking out, which one can appreciate through their portraits, their consorts and menageries, which an imagination will readily recognize:
TO BE VIEWED ONE AT A TIME. GO FULL SCREEN, ENLARGE IMAGES (COMMAND + ON A MAC). IMAGERY CHANGES WITH DISTANCE AND THROUGH SQUINTED EYES
PERSONAJES CLANDESTINOS ESCONDIDOS EN LA LUZ, COLORES E SOMBRAS DE LA OBSCURIDAD
(Clandestine Personages Hiding in the Light, Colors and Shadows of the Dark)
JACKSON is my name, REFRACTION is my game!
I am a person obsessed with color and light that I have been meditating on and exploring for a lifetime. I think of my current project as photography of the imaginary, informed by abstract expressionism. My images are intended to stimulate inner feelings from shock to deep pleasure. through expressions of light, color and form.
PERSONAJES CLANDESTINOS, are my latest effort in that regard.
To me, some evoke images of ancient pre-Columbian deities in full regalia like those found in codices. Because they existed in the imaginations of the artists depicting them while assembling the components they were supposed to represent, as they were imagined, who's to say they’re not hiding in my images camouflaged by color, light and shadow as I have imagined them? Have I somehow discovered their “seeing" technique?
An imagination will find faces, forms, god spirits, and the like resplendent in their gleaming regalia, along with their assistants and the perpetual presence of a camarilla of demons and spies. Others are camouflaged by the color and shadows of the underworld.
My MAJOR influences in this project are the late, great Bob Bilyeu Camblin and Mexican surrealist Alejandro Colunga. Others in the Mexican school that have been a great influence are Chucho Reyes, Cesar Agusto Martinez, Eloy Tarcisio, Francisco Toledo, Pedro Coronel, Rodolfo Morales, Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siquieros, Rufino Tamayo.
Charles Burchfield, for his paintings of spooky forests and Henri Rosseau, whom hid animals in his, are also major influences in crafting my abstractions. M.C. Escher and Pedro Friederberg, particularly regarding the series that emanate from the results of their fusion.
Major photographic influences are the late great Texas and King Ranch photographer, John L. Bintliff, who taught me that anything could be photographed and Belgian photographer, Jacques de Selliers, who taught me to do a good job of it.
In my collection are also abstractions and colors that may tout Miro, Arp, Hoffman, compositions that mimic while suggesting Picasso, or Ken Price, Man Ray, Francis Bacon, Arshile Gorky, Salvador Dalí, Willem de Kooning. Munchian screams, Boschian tableaus, Basquiat whimsy, Paul Jenkins spontaneity, the fluidity of Henry Moore, to name a few of the artists that have influenced my eye, all found alluded to in colorful refractive abundance in the suggestive squiggles of color and light, that fascinate me so.
Mark Tobey, James Brooks, Sam Francis, William Bazotes, Robert Motherwell, Larry Bell, Franz Kline, Yves Klein, Jean Paul Riopelle, Barnett Newman, Jeff Koons, Norman Bluhm, Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, Cy Twombly, Mark Rothko, Max Ernst, Andre Masson, Giorgio de Chirico, Edouardo Paolozzi, Jose Maria Cundin, Peter Paone, Lucas Johnson, Earl Staley, James Surls, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Stout, Dick Wray, Charles Schorre, David Adickes, Kristi Karll and the conceptualist Art Guys, are ALL in my images in one form or another.
I feel that I have “broken through” a metaphysical barrier in my longtime obsession of photographing refracted color and light and am now somehow communing with those I have learned to recognize after a decade of “seeing” them, now revealing themselves to me as this project develops. They seem to be in another dimension looking out, which one can appreciate through their portraits, their consorts and menageries, which an imagination will readily recognize:
TO BE VIEWED ONE AT A TIME. GO FULL SCREEN, ENLARGE IMAGES (COMMAND + ON A MAC). IMAGERY CHANGES WITH DISTANCE AND THROUGH SQUINTED EYES
