Aran 2005

Sean Scully made this print, "Aran," and it really speaks to me. I can see the artist out in the landscape, camera in hand, thinking about how to translate what he sees into something else entirely. I wonder what Scully was thinking about when he made this. There's a quietness to the photograph, with the grey tones. You can almost feel the dampness in the air. It makes me think about my own practice, that back-and-forth between what's in front of me and what's in my head. Do I paint what I see or what I feel? The photograph is all about layers, just like painting. The wall, the grass, the sky... it all comes together to create this amazing sense of depth and texture. It reminds me that art is an ongoing dialogue, where we build on what others have done before us. It is about creating a record of our experience and inspiring new ways of seeing the world.