Enfolding Perspectives

and other little collections
by Simran Singh Gleason

Artist's Statement

I work in photography and photocollage, pastel and charcoal, and poetry. I really love to organize bits of my work into series and collections with a common theme. I have put together a few of those collections here on the Internet. I am hoping people will be able to see my work and perhaps even send me some feedback.

Along with my artwork, I also work in the computer industry developing software. These little shows are one of the ways I have been able to combine these two (sometimes rather disparate) parts of my life.

Enfolding Perspectives

I have been working on photographic collage since 1988 (the Pigeon Point Lighthouse is the first collage I did), and worked for five years developing methods of handling space and non-linear perspectives in photographic media.

This work culminated in my one-artist show at the Gallery 92 West in Half Moon Bay, California, in March 1993. That show, my first museum show, was also entitled "Enfolding Perspectives." The artist's statement for this show describes my struggle with linear perspective and the perspective transformations I used to overcome some of the inherent limitations of "straight" photography.

With my one-artist show and the two slideshows I presented on the perspective transformations I used to create an alternate sense of space, I felt that I had completed my technical work in exploring linear perspective and its limitations. This freed me up, artistically, to move into other domains.

I had dabbled in drawing over the last several years, but never gave it my full concentration until last summer, when in June (1993) I began drawing in earnest, starting with drawing my hands in charcoal, and progressing to pastel landscapes and self portraits.

The next few collections are a sample of this work, an excursion into what is for me a new artistic domain.

Landspaces

I continually find myself drawn to painting the landscape. At first in order to develop my eye (I still do this to keep up my training); gradually I am beginning develop the audacity necessary to take on the impossible task of attempting to capture the feeling of being in a landspace (i.e. particular landscapes, not the general feeling of being in landscape as opposed to being in, say, an office).

I call this show "Landspaces" as a result of a typo while trying to emit "landscapes." I immediately liked the result, and found the word I've been looking for since I put the show together. I think the name really fits because what I'm really doing is exploring the notion of space and spatial representation in a tw dimensional drawing. In a landspace we have constant three (four?) dimensional input from a multiplicity of sources. The view, the sounds, the smells, textures underfoot, all change subtly and dramatically as we move. There is a definining experience of space that is very difficult to describe, very difficult to translate and convey.

I have put a few small collections of my landspace drawings and paintings. Some of them are rather voyeuristic exercises in capturing the look of the area I happen to be painting, others try to go a little deeper into the notion of land and space.

Portraits, Self-Portraits, and Masks.

Another broad area I find myself drawn to is painting self portraits and masks. This kind of painting gives me a chance to (more directly) bring psychological and spiritual elements to my work.
More details in Masks: A Ramble.

Simran Singh Gleason