DRAWING OUT
the SHORE-LINE
Mixed media photography by laura j hackett
Laura Hackett: Artist Statement
Along the shorelines of the Salish Sea there are layered memories. These shorelines are all connected; what surrounds them, what formed them, what happened, what will happen. Shorelines are nature but are also shaped by culture. This nature reacts in accordance to the conditions that hinder or help it.
The ‘Drawing Out the Shore-line’ exhibit is an aesthetic contemplation on the analogy between the processes of nature at these shorelines (ebb and flow, night and day, light and seasons.) and the nature of creativity itself. My motivation comes from wanting to juxtapose human design with nature’s design while at the same time reflecting on the creative process itself.
Nature is a dynamic process in which time and space, mass and energy are continuous. Nature evolves and shifts, a process I too am trying to emulate while creating a picture. Creating from both the perceptions of the moment and from my interpretation inspired by shifting cultural influences. What influences are hindering me and what can I create in accordance to the conditions that help me? How do energy, time and resources impact the creative outcome? Why do I begin an idea and sit on it for a time before completion? What motivates me to complete something? What do I accept, what do I reject and why?
These pictures also express a way of looking; re-discovering what might be familiar but is not. The paradox of these pictures is to reproduce something we all see, but at the same time drawing out an impression of the uncertainty of reality.
Just as nature can transform, shape, investigate, delight, show, provoke this creative experience has done the same.
