“Time, memory, and the natural world always play a key role in my work.” – Marcia Lamont Hopkins
Photographer, Marcia Hopkins
By applying a poetic and often metaphorical language to her photographic images, Marcia Lamont Hopkins opens the door to the unknown, to multiple realities, both real and artificial, so that one questions what is really happening.
Her images establish a link between the landscape’s reality and the artist’s imagination. While this could, to some extent, be said to be true of any artist using landscapes, Hopkins pushes the limits of our perception of what is real. Each object or environment seems entirely natural and plausible, yet the juxtaposition within the artist’s gauzy, dreamlike atmosphere creates an uneasy sense of mystery. Is our understanding shifting in relationship to time, memory, or some other reality that we can’t quite define?
"Casaubon" by Marcia Hopkins, 17x22in, digital archival print (2017), $500 | BUY NOW
In her artist’s statement, Hopkins explains it this way: “The series, Causabon’s Illusion, crafts a series of metaphorical vignettes rooted in elements of magical realism and the mind’s tendency to search for all-inclusive answers. In George Elliot’s Middlemarch, Edward Causabon spends his life in a futile and absurd attempt to find a comprehensive explanation for the whole of civilization’s knowledge and mythologies. Deluded, he believes that he alone has the key to humanity’s searching, an illusion which may be reflected in our culture today.”
"The Beekeeper" by Marcia Hopkins, 17x22in, digital archival print (2017), $500 | BUY NOW
As part of her 60WRD/MIN project, Art Historian and Chicago Tribune art critic Lori Waxman wrote of Hopkin’s work: “We like to control animals and nature, but when they get beyond our understanding things tend to get interesting. Hopkins envisions overgrown forests, historic graveyards, farm animals, and occasionally people, often in combination, in impeccable digital prints that blend multiple shots into believable wholes. The weirder and more convincing, the better: a sheep enmeshed in a dense forest seems as if it and the trees are made of the same stuff, a lama in a rolling meadow becomes one with the horizon and the clouds.”
Hopkins currently has a solo exhibit at Gratz Park Inn in Lexington, KY.
*Burnaway: The Voice of Art In The South, March 27, 2017
"Buffalo (Custer)" by Judy Rosati, 16x20in, hand colored silver gelatin photograph (2015), $125 (matted & framed) | BUY NOW
Hand coloring black & white photographs may seem quaint or old-fashioned, yet in a time when we are inundated with digital imagery in our every waking moment, the virtues of such an approach are not difficult to understand: occasionally we need to rest our overexposed, weary eyes. Judy Rosati’s use of the technique has the effect of allowing us to view the busy world in slow motion and ponder what it must have been like before we were swallowed up by the media age.
"Old Faithful (Yellowstone National Park)" by Judy Rosati, 16x20in, hand colored silver gelatin photograph (2015), $125 (matted & framed) | BUY NOW
Rosati’s approach has shifted recently to an even more informal, subjective use of color that introduces abstraction to what are determinedly representational images. In “Old Faithful” the familiar geyser in Yellowstone National Park is less tourist image than a study that blurs the distinctions of the natural world, rendering the kinetic motion as a surreal curtain being drawn across our field of vision, the subdued tones evoking nostalgia while simultaneously reducing depth and dimensionality.
Rosati shoots both film and digital, but her hand-colored photographs are printed from film negatives. “After the print is made, I use Marshall's Photo Oils and Prisma pencils, “ she explains. “My attempt to personalize my interpretation of the subject matter is evident by the spontaneous use of color, as well as the retention of some of the natural aspects of the original black, white and gray areas. No two photographs are exactly alike, making each one unique.”
"Geese in Winter" by Judy Rosati, 16x20in, hand colored silver gelatin photograph (2016), $125 (matted & framed) | BUY NOW
The artist is the owner of Judy Rosati's Fine Arts Photography LLC, a juried member of Louisville artisan's Guild--co-liaison (photographer) to web curator, Jury committee member; scholarship committee juror. Rosati is a Juried member of Kentucky Crafted--regular juried artist in Kentucky Arts Council shows, and an Artist member of Louisville Visual Art. She was a digital photography Instructor in Bellarmine's School of Continuing & Professional Studies for 11 years, and still gives private digital photography instruction.
Rosati’s work will be a part of the Kentucky Arts Council exhibit, Kentucky Visions at The Capitol, January-March 2017.
Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky Age: 72 Education: Bachelor’s Degree (Art education; Health & Physical education), Western Kentucky University; Master’s Degree in Arts Education, Eastern Kentucky University Gallery Representative: Edenside Gallery (Louisville) Website:http://www.judyrosatiphotography.com/
"Wildflower Walk in the Parklands" by Judy Rosati, 16x20in, hand colored silver gelatin photograph (2016), $125 (matted & framed) | BUY NOW
"Parklands of Floyd's Fork in Winter" by Judy Rosati, 16x20in, hand colored silver gelatin photograph (2015)
