Friday, May 27, 2011

Best Laid Plans

It seems that more and more frequently despite my best efforts to meticulously plan and conceptualize my projects they seem to spiral out of my control. To the right is an image from one such project. When I began this work I was interested in figuratively processing foods by overprocessing a photographic image of food sources utilizing photogravure as a base medium for expression. I was going to damage the plate, the gel, and generally do everything I could to transform what I thought was a perfect image into something ugly.

However, I failed in this endeavor . . . the result was not ugly. In fact it put the original image to shame. Some instinct seems to have taken over as I worked, and as I systematically layered the reprocessed image on top of the original my color choices and use of transparency created beauty within the imperfections. I'm still not quite sure how this happened, but I am sure that I'm happy with the result and that I'll continue to explore this new process. Hopefully, as I keep working I'll figure out why the more I break down these images the more beautiful they become. I suppose that sometimes the best laid plans can fail in just the right way so that they lead to success.

No comments:

Post a Comment