This is the season in which I passed the milestone 10,000 of deliberate practice learning the art of photography (5th August 2025)
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Top Image
“Magritte Pointing at a Picture of His Younger Self”
A visualisation of a gallery showing works from my Fellowship panel (see: “Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society“)
Other Images
The above is used as the feature image of my “Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting” where I discuss the recent exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. I think the picture above is enhanced by the woman in orange positioned such that the woman in the painting (Saville’s sister) on the right appears to be looking straight at her whilst Saville herself stares at us
The theme of the show was very much: real bodies of real women. I think this photograph makes that point
“Gastown Diptych”
Shot through the famous Gas Clock in Vancouver’s Gastown district. The combination of images makes an abstract that is greater than the sum of it’s part
“Giant of the Sea”
A humpback whale displaying it’s fluke, with it’s body replaced by sea, blurring the line between animal and it’s environment
“Burnt Trees and Mountains of Jasper”
One year after the wild fires of Alberta destroyed half the town of Jasper and much of the surrounding woodland. This image is part of a set that shows how the region is recovering
“Bow Lake with Blue Stripe”
Classic landscape image of Bow Lake in Alberta, but with a remarkable blue stripe caused purely by the light and weather conditions
“Half a Red Headed Woman”
Model shot on a studio day, but I think the crop makes an arresting image
“Fractured High Wire”
My standard multiple exposure processing (as expounded in my 2019 post: “Dynamic Abstraction through Multiple-Exposure“) applied to a sculpture in Lublin
“Shadow Through the Door”
First of a series of images experimenting with the concept of a shadow leading through to the next room
Initial concept developed by René Magritte
“Self Portrait in Front of Artwork”
Distinctions
Having been successful in my Fellowship with the Royal Photographic Society in the Spring, other distinctions have assumed a lower priority although I recognise that they acknowledge accomplishment on a different metric
New Artists
11th June: Rodney Smith very much my style of photography but shot in an earlier time, on film and without manipulation
18th June: the Venetian Renaissance painters: Giorgione & Titian, creators of Sleeping Venus and Venus of Urbino respectively which feature in Jenny Saville’s “Mirror” charcoal. They lived in the same house and apprenticed under Giovanni Bellini who pioneered the High Renaissance with its more colourful and sensuous style, i.e., appeal to the senses rather than the intellect. In age, they are close to both Hieronymus Bosch and Leonardo da Vinci although Bosch was Dutch and da Vinci was born in/ close to Florence rather than Venice
28th June: the 4 major Sienese pre-Renaissance Gothic painters:
- Duccio
- Simone Martini
- Pietro & Ambrogio Lorenzetti
6th July: a number of important Canadian artists and 2 that I think will have a lasting impact on me:
- Douglas Coupland – Canadian visual artist and author; a gentler version of Jenny Holzer who I first encountered almost exactly a year previously (see my “Summer 2024”) author of, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture”
- Jean Paul Riopelle – a lyrical abstractionist who had a long term relationship with the American Abstract Expressionist Joan Mitchell
22nd August: Tamara de Lempicka, not knowing about this icon of Art Deco style was a massive hole in my art history knowledge. Although actually first encountered, two months earlier on a private tour of Sotheby’s on the 18th June
29th August: Paz Errázuriz, Chilean documentary photographer of the vulnerable during the reign of General Pinochet
Notes:
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