RICHARD CARTER
ROAD WORKS
July 17 – August 28 2013
Reception
Wednesday, July 24 from 6 – 9pm
ART WORKS
a contemporary gallery
174 Midland Ave, Basalt
10% of proceeds from opening’s sales will be donated to Wyly Community Art Center
Driving between Colorado and Los Angeles as I often do, one cannot help but be awestruck by the geography and the atmosphere of the West. Cruising at 85 mph on a black ribbon over mountains, plunging into gorges, thru deserts, skirting farmland, passing towns small and large…in places the road extends straight ahead for seemingly endless miles. Totally mythic.
And above it all the ever-changing magnificent sky… Pure cobalt blending into white hot at the horizon, massing storm clouds blending into inky black, towering thunderheads, flashes of lighting, screaming rain and hail, blinding blizzards, ferocious sandstorms, infinite stars, blazing technicolor sunsets and it’s constantly changing from mile to mile. The Dutch have nothing on the American West when it comes to the sky.
About three years ago I started documenting my drives with the iPhone camera using a very simple pair of filters. I wanted these photographs to be from the hand and eye of a painter so I needed a rudimentary but adequate camera. At the time the iPhone camera was pretty rudimentary …safe to say it has evolved very rapidly in the past 3 years into something very remarkable. I am still going with it.
These images reflect the bones of the trip that I have traveled many, many times. And more importantly, this series is formally consistent with all my work over the past several decades, in that there is a very recognizable emphasis on the sky and the horizon and what’s below.
Whether painting the night sky , or Icebergs or lightning strikes or fire, or birds… the sky above seems to be a big part of the story in all my work. And driving thru Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California, the incredible landscape gets some serious competition for the eye from the atmosphere.
This group of photographs is a record of all these elements over a relatively short period of 3 years. They are selections from my visual diary chronicaling the beauty and inspiration I encounter on every one of these trips. I love the drive.
And I AM driving when shooting. I make it a point to not stop to shoot. I want the car moving, often very fast, when shooting. I want that spontaneity and don’t want to pull over for the “postcard shot”. Its part of the deal.
Richard Carter 2013