As I sift through my photographs I realize that they are often much more painterly than many of the paintings I have made. I guess I have done enough ‘making of photographs’ that it becomes easier to let go – to be experimental – to play.
Somehow in all that play we stumble across visuals that lure us in and keep us going. That keep us making. Images that express something we want to say or something that we feel even if those things are not easily put into words. It is a beautiful thing to be completely drawn in by what you are working on; to be lost in images and ideas and explorations.
I suppose I am trying to get through a painting ‘slump’ as I look at the many abandoned works littering my studio. Those canvasses seem to be getting impatient, though. I hope at some point the freedom I feel when wielding a camera will shift into a paint brush, or a pencil. These photographs I have been working on are nudging me towards something more tactile; not attempts to recreate what I have done photographically – though surely these things speak to each other – but to push past the stumbling block of expecting perfection and specific outcomes when I put a brush to canvas. This is what I am learning – let go. There is nothing to lose, really, except the risk of getting lost in the work.
From the photographic series ‘Colour Field’
© Karen McRae, 2014
It’s hard to think of a more beguiling name for a place than Singing Sands. Who could resist going when you find those words on a map? It’s here where the great Lake Huron breathes its cool water in and out, over the sands and the expansive fen, pushing and pulling like a small tide. Taking and leaving. Creating a landscape of rich and diverse flora and great beauty and peacefulness.
draw and shoot 