Painting through Photography

Painting through Photography
“Maintaining a Sense of Artistry in World Fast Losing Creative its Instincts”
Written by Rick Trottier – RJT Images-Light Works Studio
We live in a world that is increasingly dominated by statistics, algorithms, quantitative theory and other mechanical processes that allow mathematics to dictate almost every corner of our lives. From how sports are played, to what kind of franchise store will be built in your neighborhood, to what ads show up whenever you open social media, to how children are taught, every facet of our lives is steadily being controlled by the cold sciences of computational thinking. Life used to be more about art and creativity and less about clinical analysis. Sadly, very little of our lives involve art, but with a little effort and thought behind what we do, we can bring the magic of imaginative effort into our lives from time to time. One example is how I approach my photography.

From my earliest memories, I have always loved various forms of art. As a little boy, I spent inordinate amount of time drawing and despite a lack of manual dexterity I kept up that love well into my thirty-somethings. I still enjoy contemplating a wide assortment of art, especially classical landscape painting from the 18th and 19th centuries. It was that expanding love of artistic endeavor that caused me to gravitate to photography. By the time I was a teenager, I had become sufficiently able to self-evaluate and could easily see my ability to draw or paint was not going to amount to more than passing fancies. But I did love photography and despite the very time and energy consuming nature of developing one’s own film, I became hooked. It was when photography’s basic principles began to transform at the dawn of its digital age that I began a somewhat different evolution as an artist in that field. At first, I resisted the changes of digital art, despite the fact that this new form of photography offered some benefits I didn’t immediately see. But as technology steadily caused the process of photography to change, I realized that I was given a chance to “paint through photography” and do some of the work that I had always admired so much in the various genres of art that impacted so profoundly as a youth.
You can read more of this article in our New Years 2023 Issue of ModelsMania