Artist Statement
Born in Dublin, Ireland, my journey in image making began when I was around eight years old. I must have expressed an interest in photography because Santa Claus placed a beginner’s photo chemistry kit under our Christmas tree.
My parents had a old fashioned brass bed with heavy blankets that reached the ground. It was under there that I set up my “alchemists cave” and began a life long experiment in image making.
For me there is a need to express something more than the perfect likeness that the camera captures, a wish for the a bit of me to be felt in the work. I began trying to enhance my images using various techniques, including applying colour tints from the kits that, in those days, came with Kodak black and white processing.
I worked in several studios in Dublin, Ireland and London, and San Francisco and travelled extensively in Montana, Alaska, The Northwest Territories and the Yukon, during which time Ive had the priceless opportunity to work with some great professionals. Ive had access to state of the art studios in which to further my experiments with color, textures, tints and to explore printing techniques both traditional and contemporary.
The work of many other photographers has influenced me, were always walking in the footsteps of those before us. Investigating their skills lead to my using techniques such as adding pigments, layers of texture, the painted layers that give my work the look and feel it has today.
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