Felicity Somerset
Artist Profile
Artists statement:
Artist Statement
Based in Toronto, I am a fine art photographer. My photographic subjects are often, but not exclusively, drawn from landscape and nature in both Canadian and international locations including England, the United States and Costa Rica. I am also interested in the urban landscape.
I am attracted again and again to the intimate and often abstract image that captures the essence of a subject and the intricacies of texture, line and colour. The focus on texture and colour often leads to assumptions by viewers that the images are painted rather than photographed.
I am particularly interested in the concept of the passing of time and its impact on context, identity and surface. Recent collections exploring this theme include:
Marking Time and Space
The images explore the passage of time through the surfaces of mature tree barks, rusting metal and old walls. Beyond this material aging process, these surfaces have become sites for inscriptions both formal and informal and are often concerned with identity. Some of the inscriptions are multi-layered, and suggest interventions at different times by different writers. These human interventions in the aging materials record a moment in time and place, and reflect a story often unknown to us. In turn, these markings and sites will succumb to the ravages of time.
The images explore the passage of time through the surfaces of mature tree barks, rusting metal and old walls. Beyond this material aging process, these surfaces have become sites for inscriptions both formal and informal and are often concerned with identity. Some of the inscriptions are multi-layered, and suggest interventions at different times by different writers. These human interventions in the aging materials record a moment in time and place, and reflect a story often unknown to us. In turn, these markings and sites will succumb to the ravages of time.
Tree Markers
These images focus on the bark as it marks a tree’s own passage through time, as well as the ways in which human “tree markers” have entwined history and memory.
Distillations I & II
These abstract macro images of flowers capture a fleeting moment in time when the blossoms are at their most beautiful before their inevitable withering and death. Inspired by perennial flowerbeds in some of the most famous gardens in England, Distillations II presents work in a cool but intense palette of colours, and builds on the earlier collection, Distillations I that explores a warmer colour palette.
The Tidal Remnants collection captures a brief inter-tidal moment on seashores of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The strong textural quality of the sand forms the background for macro and abstract compositions that last for only a few hours between tides, and then are gone forever.
March 2011
Website:
www.felicitysomerset.ca
History
- Member for
- 2 years 33 weeks
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