Last week was Fashion Week in New York with 300 collections shown over the eight days. I’m not a big follower of fashion style because black is black, leather is leather, and that pretty much describe my fashion sense but I bring it up because it coincided with the beginning of the art show season in New York. It is as if the art world goes into a summer doldrums of sorts every year which it came out in a marathon of openings last week. The trend continued this week with ArtCat listing 64 openings for just today.
I was offhandedly invited to an opening tonight at the Rick Wester Fine Art gallery in Chelsea. I almost didn’t go because the weather turned terrible late in the day but in the end I decided to go and was glad I did.
The show is titled “Untold Stories” and is a collection of photos by the photographer Jonathan Smith. I haven’t gone to many photography shows but more and more I seem to be turning to my photography as my main artistic outlet. I do want to paint in the worst way but to be brutally honest photography offers the immediate gratification that I sometimes seem to crave.
Smith’s work is in color which I shy away from. I love the subtle shades and contrasts b&w photography offers but I was pleasantly surprised at what I found at the show. Smith’s photos are drenched in deep dark intense color and they seem to almost drip with color as if they were a wet painting. I don’t know how he does it but it is something I might have to experiment with and figure out.
I’ll leave you with two links. The first is a slideshow of the photos in the show. The second is a photo I found on Smith’s website that I totally like.
slideshow
photo
The journey continues
