Through making my artwork I express or explore my inner life by investigating ideas, digesting experiences, and examining specific questions. While some ideas come without warning or obvious reason, I often draw on my past, dreams or nightmares, fantasies, books, favorite artists, curiosity and thoughts sparked by the process of working. Making my work helps me to better understand the world and my place in it.
Making art has helped me explore the secrets we keep, wonder about the limits of human ability and potential, examine how one generation of women can affect another without ever having met, and to change my mind about things I thought I knew. I have explored the connections between growth and deterioration, conformity and rebellion, inner and outer life. Duality, perspective, perception, and consciousness continue to fascinate me.
My most recent body of work, currently in progress and tentatively titled "reVisions" is a series of digital collages I have constructed from my photographs. Texture, color, movement, repetition and composition are considerations in selecting source material and reconstructing an image. Personal meaning associated with each image is as important to me as the formal considerations; but I also find it fascinating to hear what other people see or feel from each piece. Most of the original subjects appear to be mundane, but when repeated and reconfigured in a collage they make unexpected patterns, and (hopefully) invite the viewer to see something new and different in the familiar.
Websites to visit:
www.jeffjohnsonstudio.com
www.hudsonvalleypottery.com
www.danileventhal.com
