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The ability to see what is on the surface of things, to see beauty and ellegance, to see rhythm and form, in part, gives us the incentive to attempt to capture and share those visions. When the capturing and sharing is done, done skillfully, creatively we call it art. Pleasure, satisfaction, sometimes inspiration flow from that interplay between the seeing and the doing.
But within the process of creating art there is another endeavour another practice which is to see beyond the surface of things to see into the essence, into the spirit, into the potential, of the vision.
The work of Jan Marmenout exemplifies that endeavor particularly well.
His images are spell-binding, haunting, sometimes soothing, sometimes painfully touching. 
The drape of a curtain, what appears to be a surface of parched earth are seen and revealed for the beauty of their textures for the softness of color for the rhythms of form. And then they are transformed into canvasses, into backdrops for other images to be overlaid upon them and those images become something quite different to what they originally were.
Reflections on water move beyond mirror images and are pushed into the realms of pure, exquisite abstraction.

photography w/out borders
David McKeown
Admin · October 30 at 5:25am