LAGSTEIN GALLERY
PREDRAG DUBRAVCIC
Born in 1965 in Croatia. A few years before college, forms a distinct photography style, which helps him enroll at the Zagreb Film Academy. During studies, a small group of photographer friends coined a term for this style: "Pure Photography" – described as freedom from inheriting the meaning directly from the photographic subject, and instead creating meaning and emotion by pure photographic means: MAKING a photograph instead of CAPTURING the subject. After studies, moves to New York in 1988, and to Rockland in 1992. As a cinematographer, Predrag has lensed a number of commercials, music videos, 2 feature films and recently lead the 2nd unit on Netflix show Ripley. But the continuity of the photographic opus has never been interrupted: over the span of the last 40+ years there's just a steady evolution, sometimes shifted by the changes in technology, but mostly influenced by gradual growth of visual perception – and visual philosophy.
A sheltering title of my recent work is Everything is Inside. It is trying to suggest the power of empathy towards all that is in front of our eyes. An inside view to the outside, which of course makes them an outside view to the inside. And this inside is hopefully collective. (Please let me know.)
Basically, these images are visual explorations of some archetypal level of emotions, or emotions in our deeper selves, before they are able to be defined by words. Possibly stemming from this, there's also an ongoing (tongue in cheek) idea that what I shoot are ghosts. This kind of started as a joke, since I'd often try to capture something invisible: visual elements would be pushed to the edges of the frame, leaving some space "for our experience to unfold" in the middle. But it also reflects on the work process: there's a feeling that an image needs to happen just by being at a certain place at a certain time, before I see what I eventually photograph. And then it becomes easier, as if the communication channel opens. Whether this makes me a medium, or is all just about a visual sensitivity, can be debated.
My workflow is spontaneous and subconscious – which is why I can't attribute to it any social awareness or predetermined concept. However, since our subconscious is aware of social subjects as well, later analysis may, in retrospect, bring some of this content to light and expound on it. This art-for-arts-sake approach sounds like something romantic and anachronistic(?), and might not meet some conceptual expectations of today. But a compulsion to create, without having a choice, intent or plan, to me sounds like an advantage.
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Predrag Dubravcic
Coming: April 26
Karen Edelmann:
Escaping realism, I can imagine earth, wind, water, shadow,
color and clouds as I want them to be, rather than as documents or portraits. But sometimes there's a view, full of meaning, that captures your heart and insists on a more faithful image. Both appear in my work.
But above all, I love the joy and freedom of working with oils. Applying color, true or arbitrary, layering thickly, scraping or withholding, sometimes color dark and dense, other times airy and translucent, it is always a pleasure. And while I sometimes try for quiet neutrals and smoky grays, color often takes the upper hand.
Susan Lais Hostetler
Watercolor paints and pen and ink are the tools to which I've always gravitated. I discovered a dark lovely bottle of ink and a nib pen when I was young, and I've been a fan ever since. Watercolors I picked up because they went with ink it seemed to me. I've been carrying around little watercolor sets since I was a child, and although as an adult I know that watercolors are hard, fast, and difficult to control, I nearly always find the colors pleasing, even if I think I've botched it.
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Beverly Miller
When I’m immersed in nature, I feel the complexity of our times glide off my brain, and comfort my heart.
I try to convey that feeling tooters through my paintings and drawings. Once an individual can actually confront their place on this planet in relationship to nature, I feel that we can understand and move forward with our lives in a way that contributes to the better nature of human beings.
My vision of nature and my focus is what I’m trying to put in the minds of others.
It may not be what others see but I’m opening my world to them.
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Ellen Murphy
I like a landscape with trees and buildings as much as anyone does, but when I start painting I often seem to veer offtrack. How is a landscape different with flat color areas rather than amorphous? What is a landscape like in a dream? Or on another planet? Or up close to the plants?