Lens Culture Review
Reviewer Portfolio Feedback
Thank you very much for submitting your work. Allow me to begin by writing that I very much enjoyed spending time with your work. There’s a great deal of variety and eclecticism over your five pictures and I think this probably speaks to your joy and curiosity in investigating expressive qualities of art, and in the montage approach in particular. For example, I’m drawn to the dynamism and energy in image one, as well as how you arrest time and motion. As in image three, there’s a heavy degree of symmetrical balance in regard to many of the secondary and/or background elements in the picture. Of course, the scene is dominated by the sculptural horses which I believe are the Mustangs at Las Colinas installation. You wisely depict the animals running towards the viewer and this makes the audience feel as if they are present in a visceral manner. I think it’s very interesting that you are putting these highly recognizable animals, created by another artist, into your own original context. However, I strongly suggest you reference this and account for this artistic decision. I have similar comments in regard to image three.
There is definitely a strident degree of symmetrical balance in this picture (Image 3) that dominates the compositional plane. I find it can be difficult to work with this degree of such heightened symmetrical balance because the more prominent elements on the left side of the composition more or less exactly match those on the right, and often the result is an image that is too orderly and prescribed. Therefore I suggest you give more prominence and visual weight to the varied elements that seem to reside in the background. Allow these to bubble up to the surface by perhaps altering the tonality or the color of these areas, or increasing the subject scale.
Image two is quite different and here I’m drawn to the tenderness and poignancy of this memorial image to a bird. Your stated concept of tenderness toward all living creatures is very much evident in the formal properties of the picture. As with your other collages, I think it is necessary that this is such a relatively large and elongated picture because you are incorporating so many details.
As for your two more traditional portraits, there’s a wonderful degree of surfaceness in image four that is compelling, and there’s an interesting tension between that quality and what appears to be a rather rigid depiction of the body. Take care with the highlights as these are extremely bright at the bottom of the – this becomes a distraction.
Image five is perhaps one of your more straightforward and traditional pictures and I applaud the relatively restrained approach to color. The rather drab and consistent deployment of grays throughout the frame entails that the red hues of the flames and the main subject are all the more striking. This is a sound image. In regard to your comment under item number one, I certainly feel that you are working with successful imagery in what I imagine is a very positive trajectory.
I hope you can tell that I found your work highly interesting and engaging overall. I’ve enjoyed viewing your work, and I hope to see more in the future.