Spring has arrived

The  noticeably warmer days during  this last week in August suggest that spring is  arriving.  The sun  now rises before 6.45am and it sets just before 6pm. It is also warmer  and have started going on the early morning and late afternoon poodlewalks without a coat.   I am also  now able to enjoy breakfast on the balcony in the early morning sun.  I am sure that the wet weather weather will soon return.

Surprisingly,  my poodlewalk photography   during  the  cusp of spring/winter in 2018,  when the light becomes special,   is becoming  darker:

granite, am

The reason is not  just the low light capabilities of the Sony digital camera. I spend a lot of time being in the  coastal space  of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula,  but  as  I am isolated  in Adelaide with this kind of photography,   I have  been searching to find   what other artists representing coastal Australia in their work  have been doing.   I notice that some  work in the dark mode with their explorations of   impending storm clouds towering over the land or the wild stormy seas.

The dark mode appeals, and   I have started looking at  group exhibitions to  find a visual  affinity with the ways that some  artists have approached   representing the  ocean, waves,  rocks and sky.

My general approach has to avoid the timeless, the presence of a time eternal, or  to capture the essence of place . I  go  micro:- focusing  on the detail in the littoral zone –and then within that on the humble, the moment or   the transitory:

granite + rock pool

Other artists that I have come across some  like Sophia Szilagyi work in terms of equivalents–her seascapes are images of  the way it  feels  to be in that particular landscape.

 Caroline Rannersberger, in contrast, avoids the standard  one fixed viewpoint, and uses multiple panel landscapes  to represent the landscape with  multiple and shifting points of connection or viewpoints across time and space. These  paintings   often  focus on the sublime.

Some of my micro work suggests movement, or flow,  to highlight the ephemerality or the moment within the littoral zone:

granite + sea

Most of the representations coastal landscapes that  I am coming across are  by painters.  Rarely do I see work by photographers included  in the various  group exhibitions  that explore ways of seeing  coastal Australia.

For some reason photographers are  on the outer of the commercial  gallery’s  rosters of artists.    Is this because of the limitations of photography–eg, the camera would struggle  to capture the light, subtle colours and shifting forms of coastal landscapes? Or photographs are snaps that lack an internal pictorial logic? Painting, it appears, has been set in opposition to digital  photography.