A ready-made series, or several

It’s funny how sometimes you take the same photographs of the same places and, without even realising it, track the seasons of time through those pictures.

One of the views that always strikes me as particularly dramatic is that of Whaleback Rock here in Torbay. I walk over the crest of the hill on our street and the ocean is before me. Another five minutes by foot and I am engulfed in the visually stunning combination of blue ocean, craggy cliffs and sweeping hillsides.

The photos don’t really do it justice, of course, which is one of the reasons I’m translating my visual chronology into art pieces. Still working on layouts, but the series is in progress.

The hardest part of this process is deciding whether to simply do a four-season series, whether to vary the structure and composition of the pieces from each other or whether to simply use this vista as a jumping point and do spontaneously whatever comes to mind.

The artist in me says, “be free! create!”. The businessperson in me is tempering that with, “yes, but make a saleable series and for heavens’ sake stretch it out a good bit and make some money.” I have decided that will listen to both. The first thing that came to mind was the four seasons aspect, so I’ll start with that. Complete the seasons and work in a smaller, less expensive series that mirrors the larger gallery pieces. The next step would be to play with the structure and composition, trying different media (i.e. watercolour or pen and ink drawings), perhaps working the horizontal view into four vertical tiles hung side-by-side…. You get the picture.

Here are a select few of the many photos that I’ve taken from roughly this same point of view, to give you an idea of the landscape of my world and the focus of this series :
April 26, 2006

Feb 12, 2006

Oct 21, 2005

Oct 21, 2005

Oct 21,2005

And for a bit of a twist:

Oct 3, 2005 (taken from the other side of the bight)

Starting the Gallows Cove portion of the East Coast Trail.

a quickr pickr post