As I began thinking, regarding outright sale of the collection to a competing stock agency, I started feeling differently about what I had created. I began looking into uses which I had not thought of while writing the original business plan.

Specifically of the usefulness to woodworkers and of the images’ potential value to veneer and marquetry artists. So I began to manipulate the images in ways which would be familiar to traditional woodworkers. Evolving from the burl sunburst patterns I saw on high-end tables.I tried to think to the very limits of “the box”, and in so doing was reintroduced to a graphic designers’ favorite digital metaphor, that of layers.

I began to play with the images in this context, and with each step something new was found. By treating the images as layers, rather than as surfaces, I could create entirely new forms within the original wood surfaces. As I continued to manipulate the images, faces and pseudo human forms would appear from the patterns, and were rendered immediately.

Let me simply say that these images represent for me the very edge of understanding, and have become, for myself, a profound journey of self exploration. They are each maps, and mirrors of the viewer’s deepest self.

Expectation plays such a major role in the act of self-projection. I sought to minimize the role of the artist in such a visual dialog. To find the faces and forms within the field, the viewer needs to already know what they’re going to find, otherwise its just a large abstraction, much like an ink blot.

As you have no doubt noticed, the pieces are all titled with feminine first names. I have done this for a few reasons. First off to prime the pump of expectation, so to speak. Secondly, I would like the pieces to be memorable more for the image than the title, and yet as identifiable as a friend or family member. To create a sense of warmth and intimacy between the works and the viewer, which is in my opinion much more difficult to achieve with a “profound” title.

I truly enjoy challenging artwork, those like me will find the looking to be a fun past-time. With my works in particular because as the eye finds recognition in particular areas, the others come to life. The works were created as large as they were, so as to encapsulate the viewer, with both the level of detail, and sheer size, so they may look at the work on any level, thereby building an artful sense of intimacy, from any viewing angle and/or distance from the works.

Humans are beings of repetiton and habit, seeking to find and identify patterns within every aspect of our existance. The highly symmetric nature of the work keeps the viewer’s eyes in constant motion, while the complexity of the patterns allow them to find new things every time they look back.

I purposely altered the once perfect symmetry in several subtle ways so as to keep and hold the attention of the viewer. As people are looking for repetition and pattern, so shall they be denied. The more the viewer is denied, the harder their mind will work to find it, or to fill it in completely.

In trying to make the image fit the viewer’s expectation, it is the viewers’ who are truly revealled. Thereby a visual conversation is begun between expectation, creation, and the image, with nature as the conduit, and I as the Artist.