Doble Photo Inspired By De Stael

Le Saladier, c.1954 Serigraph De Staël, Nicolas Buy at AllPosters.com

Doble Photo Inspired By De Stael

Footballers Art Print De Staël, Nicolas Buy at AllPosters.com

Doble Photo Inspired By De Stael

Agrigente, 1953 Art Print De Staël, Nicolas Buy at AllPosters.com

I have felt a kinship with De Stael for a number of years, especially the last ten. Unlike the painters at the beginning of the century who went from figurative painting to abstract painting, De Stael went in the opposite direction: he mastered abstract compositions first and then morphed into figurative imagery. His last work is the delicate merging of the abstract and the figurative that creates a space and feeling that is more than either. And his path reflects mine. When I started painting, I thought of myself only as an abstract artist, and even when I became a photographer, I thought of myself as one whose art work would be primarily abstract. And yet that is not what happened. Like De Stael, figures are now central to my work (although I still do pure abstracts) and like De Stael I am looking for that delicate middle ground between figures and abstractions -- one that I can now examine with slow shutter speed digital photography. My method of slow shutter speed imagery blurs the figures and comes close to what De Stael was aiming for.