David Watkins Jr.

Artist's Statement

My photographic work remains primarily influenced by early training as a graphic designer. I tend to see everything around me in terms of a canvas, a page or a frame waiting to be filled. All art is based on limitations. How one pushes or exploits those limits defines not only the artist, but also the "design" or the "art" itself.

As a photographer, Observations was an easy choice of title words. Explorations followed as an expression of a tendency to ask: what if? What more can an image become? How can it be modified and transformed so that it becomes a new work - artistic but still related to the original? The work in this exhibit represents both: observations of the environment, natural and man-made; and artistic explorations and transformations of some of those images into something entirely different.

Focusing on botanical and landscape images is the result of a lifetime of admiring the landscape painters of the Hudson River School and the great landscape and nature photographers Elliot Porter, Carlton Watkins, Ansel Adams and others. It is also a result of my own passion for gardens and wild places. One of my first art book purchases was Elliot Porter's 1962 "In Wildness is the Preservation of the World". It and other books by Porter and Adams are still ones I return to again and again for inspiration. .

Brief Bio

Retired from Cornell Universtiy as Director of Media and Technology Services in December of 2000. Thirty-Two years with Cornell in media, educational technology, distance learning and public relations. B.A. from The Pennsylvania State University in Applied Design

SOAG Gallery member since January, 2004

Recent Shows: SOAG "Five Visions" Feb. 2007; Spring Bouquets, Corners Gallery, May 2007; Two Photographers, 2 Bazaar Gallery, Laramie, Wyoming, June 2007

Red Tulip in the Rain