Halcyon

Often, when shooting the source images for this show, I would think to myself, “These are my halcyon days.” It’s an odd thing to recognize that a present moment will be longed for in the future; a strange conflation of what I’ve had, what I have, and what I will eventually lose. From the excitement of a holiday road trip where anything seems possible, to the bright fleeting beauty of a firework, these peaceful instances of awe and inspiration flit by, leaving us with a haze of smoke, a blazing afterimage, or a blur of color reflected on wet pavement.

Night is a time of reverie, thought, contemplation, and often, celebration. Many of my “halcyon moments” tend to happen at night….maybe it is the winding down of the day that makes me tilt towards the sentimental. At night the world slumbers and business is done; other pursuits, outside of work and commerce, fill the hours before sleep. The word “Nocturne” was originally a term for a musical composition, usually for piano, that was played in the evening. Eventually, these works became lyrical compositions meant to evoke nighttime itself. The painter Whistler, inspired by music, named a series of paintings “Nocturnes”, evoking with visuals the same gentle, moody, romantic themes of their musical counterparts. I consider these paintings to continue in that tradition.

Shooting into the darkness, my 28mm 1:8 lens captures the unseen, creating a different kind of nocturne. The mystery between what is seen and what is documented mirrors memory: what was experienced and what is remembered are often two different things, warped and molded by time and experience. Using a camera, a high speed low light lens, and numerous airbrushes, I painstakingly recreate these brief glimpses of perfect moments. What is experienced in mere seconds takes weeks of painting to translate. The photograph itself is never adequate…it is what it is, a blurry, indistinct, often over or underexposed digital image. It is through the act of painting that I can imbue the image with the ineffable saturation of experience.