A Fine Artist’s Color Palette

“A Winter Solace”  The Departure Collection Elemental, Volume II

There is just nothing quite like the exquisite color palette provided by Mother Nature.  I am a photographer for the most part.  The only thing that means is that the visual images that I create begin with a set of colors that are captured using a camera body and a lens.  Sometimes I am a painter.  The only thing that means is that I may introduce a few other tools with which I use to craft the image.  While I primarily work with digital media in my workflow, I sometimes will actually use paint on canvas, paper, or some other substrate.  No matter what I may create, no matter the tools used, with no matter paid to really anything at all I am simply awed by Mother Nature’s colors.

The image above began life with the press of the shutter button while I was standing in a farmer’s field as the winter wind blew over the dormant earth.  Landscape photographers know that Winter is a great time of year for breathtaking sunsets.   The air is clear this time of year and our relative position to the sun offers something that is just magical when mixing up a palette of color across a canvas sky.  I often work with strongly intentioned blurred images that are most of the time infused with camera motion.  These methods are employed in each series of my “Departure Collection” of fine art photography.  In each and every one of these art pieces, Mother Nature has provided the entire color palette from which I work.

There is no rhyme or reason to my workflows.  I really have no idea where I am going with an image during its creation.  I usually have a general idea of what the final image may end up looking like, but I work with a spiritual mindset and really try to practice not controlling the image.  I try to let my natural wants about how I may think the image should be subside to make room for how the image is just going to be.  Life on Earth is just a journey through phenomena.  Hopefully the journey is a beneficial one where we learn along the way the lessons that will gain us the wisdom that unlocks the simplicity of happiness for everyone.   I see the creation of the art that I produce as such a journey.  One of the most wonderful things about this journey is that is always a down right colorful one!

To see more of The Departure Collection, please visit my official website www.christopherthomaslimbrick.com and click on the Gallery link.

 

Write More

 

Write more.  That just may be the honest intention of every writer everywhere.  I aspire to write more.  On paper or on some sort of electronic format that is.  I write constantly in my head.  I write in the morning while drinking coffee and watching the birds in the yard.  I write while driving down a country road scouting for photographic opportunities. I write while working out at the gym.  All in my head.

I do carry a notebook where I am constantly jotting down notes as I wonder.  These notes most often remain just so.  Happily residing between lines in a black case until, well who knows until.  As much fun as I have when I write, I often wonder to myself why I do not write more.  The books that I keep in my head may one day start to test the storage capacity of my brain.  I suppose I am not too worried about that, as I just keep adding to them.

This morning while writing a discourse about nonsense in my head, I figured something out.  I figured out that I actually do publish the majority of my writings.  Especially the text that I keep in my head.  Let us just call them thoughts.  I figured out that these words manifest into visual form, but not in the form of letters of the alphabet.  I write in a language that transcends all languages.  I figured out that a written work is nothing more than a thought communicated through a medium that can be read with the eyes and interpreted by the brain.  Just like a transcript is nothing more than  spoken word adapted into alphabetical form.  While the action of my thought may not always be recorded by letters that are arranged into words that form sentences that get organized into paragraphs, it is action nonetheless.

The vast majority of my writings are published into photographs, and now paintings.  This brilliant art form is actually a language that all can understand.  So much of what I think, whether it be technical or spiritual in nature, factual or fiction, serious or silly, becomes integrated into my work.  As a photographer, my work has a particular style.  This is due in large part to my tastes and preferences, but more so due to my thought.  My work is often an exploration.  I am on a journey where I have no idea where the pit stops are going to be and what direction I may turn.  I understand this and enjoy it very much.

I was recently inspired to purchase a handful of canvases at the local art store.  I purchased some brushes and paint.  While checking out, I wondered myself how exactly I ended up in line with these items in my cart.  I wondered what the hell I was really going to do with them.  After all, I am a photographer, right?  Nonsense, I thought to myself.  I remembered that I have absolutely no idea what I was or what exactly it is that I do!  I smiled with excitement as I put my new wares into my truck for the ride home to my studio.  Today, for the first time in just about seventeen years, I will also be a painter.  Today I will write on the canvas.  My thoughts will be expressed in a manner that can be read and interpreted by any particular language speaker.

 

Cold Mountain and Fine Art

 

I still shiver from the cold when I look at this photograph.  The photograph itself is cold.  Perhaps I still remember with clarity my experience on the mountain that night.  I remember how my body witnessed the rapidly falling temperature that started below freezing as the sun set below the horizon and the wind whipping up the mountain side over forty miles per hour.  I remember the solitary grays and blues of the landscape as the earth traded the warm glow of the sun for the cold white light of the moon.  I sought refuge from the wind behind boulders of granite as I watched Mother Nature paint the sky for the final time that day.  Perhaps it is the power of the art that now conveys such an experience.

The earth provides us with an abundance of entertainment.  At any given moment in any given place, the ball of rock that we walk upon generates countless channels of quality programming.  I am not a connoisseur of television.  I spend a considerable amount of time “staring into space”, so to speak.  Much of this time I am simply enjoying the show.  My practice as a landscape photographer runs congruent with my spiritual practice.  Both lead me to the moment.  Sometimes that moment is pretty damn cold.

I do not shoot what I see.  I shoot what I feel.  I shoot what I perceive.  What ends up framed in white mat board and hanging on the wall above the sofa is not a capture of what I saw, it is not the result of a place in time, nor is it a documentary tale.  It is simply an experience, one that continues indefinitely.  Fine art is powerful because it moves us.  It makes us feel.  It reflects us, it makes us think, and it sometimes disturbs us or makes us feel uncomfortable.  When I venture to a location that I want to shoot, I generally have a pretty good idea about what I am after.  In most cases, I have been there before.  What I never know though is what I am going to feel.  I do not know anything exactly.  When I get there I sit.

Before I set up my camera gear, measure the light, look for a composition, or anything else photographic for that matter, I just sit.  I watch, I listen, I feel, I smell everything around me.  After some time the photograph begins to build, inside me.  It is the experience that is the powerful component.  While it can not be captured, it can be conveyed.  Just like a story, once learned, can be retold, it is the experience that I aim to convey when I press the shutter button.