Ace Of Wands

We end the year with, perhaps, the best of the year. Arguably one of the best ever. 'Ace Of Wands' was created at the request of a local gallery that asked all its artists to compose a work based on a deck of the Tarot. The imaginary nature of the subject forced a completely different approach for me. I never add objects to a photographic capture - I work, 99% of the time, with single capture, and simply bend and filter the light to create art. And I only use my own photographs - that's part of the contract I keep with the viewer. It's my creation, start to finish. But the fantasy of the Tarot would be difficult to create in a single capture, or at least difficult to create in a way that would not seem wholly convoluted to me. Each of the elements of the card, however, could be photographed. 'Ace Of Wands' was created using five of my photographs. I already had the perfect sky, the perfect castle, the perfect branch. Each would require a certain amount of cropping and masking and filtering unique to it. The hand is actually my son's hand holding a 2x2, again filtered as appropriate to the complete work. The eyes were taken from another photograph in my portfolio - they actually go beyond the Tarot, but I wanted them for the mystical effect they added. The end result has been very well received and regarded by a few as the best work I've ever done.

I don't know that I would go quite that far, but it's certainly a work I'm proud of. It led me in new directions and let me explore new techniques that are bound to resurface. This was another crazy year for me both artistically and personally, and as I look back, this is the work that most stands out.