The
Artist:
Richard Springgate
Richard Springgate has been a professional
photographer
for over thirty-five years
. Winner of nearly two hundred and fifty awards for his work
in photographing architecture he has also been published on over a hundred
occasions in every magazine from Architectural Digest to Sunset.
"That's my day job and I've loved every minute of it," he says. "On a
daily basis I see some of the most incredible examples of architecture and
design and photographing that design to show it off in its very best light
has been a continuing challenge throughout the years."
But that's only half the story. The rest of the story is his "fun
stuff."
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For his entire life Springgate has been an adventurer and a traveler. In
his youth he had a great passion for mountaineering and climbed peaks
throughout North America and New Zealand. Later he added whitewater
kayaking, canoeing, skiing, flying, sailing, cycling, Scuba diving and
mountain biking to his expanding interests. As a flier/navigator in the
Navy he spent two years in Antarctica and made over forty trips to the
South Pole. |
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In all his exploits Richard has carried a camera and has taken many
thousands of pictures of the beauty encountered in his travels. For years,
even under the relentless pressure of his friends to "get your stuff out
there" he steadfastly avoided selling any of his "fun stuff." Until now.
And in his own unique way.
"A few years ago, at over age fifty, I undertook the monumental task of
learning the use of a computer, mainly to keep up with the evolving
technology in the photo industry. It's certainly been a love/hate
experience, one which I have often thought should be left to the kids, not
old geezers like myself. But even with a rather late entry into the world
of computer imaging I discovered the incredible joys of its use in
creating artistic images."
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"I started using the computer as a sort of "magic brush" as I began to
manipulate some of the photographic images I had taken over the years. I
gloried in tearing them apart digitally and rebuilding them in new and
different ways. I painted images with a variety of unusual brush
techniques, simplified them or made them more complex and layered them
over and over with differing composites of themselves. Some images I could
produce in just a few days; others would take weeks.
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I found the
artistic tools of computer imaging to be huge in scope! My desire
was not to simply copy other painting styles and make them 'look
like' traditional paintings, but rather to expand my own artistic
horizons. I
endeavored to create images which literally went beyond the brush! I
wanted my images to be recognizable as real scenes from a real world
but in a way perhaps difficult to produce through photography or
paint alone.
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Oftentimes I love the simplicity of the original photograph and don't want
to stray too far afield working with it in the computer. The resulting
image often appears very like a traditional watercolor. But there is a
very real difference between my images and traditional watercolors: I can
digitally produce the soft washes and pastels of a watercolor while
simultaneously applying to that image the bright, intense colors and
textures of oils. This ability to 'combine media' is extremely difficult,
if not impossible, to achieve in either of the traditional mediums alone.
The ability to combine these mutually exclusive techniques of watercolor
with oil, or even with acrylics, pastels, crayon or charcoal opens up
tremendous creative possibilities which are literally "beyond the brush".
There are times when an image just "begs" for that creativity and with the
use of this 'magic brush' I can let my imagination take wing!"
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Enjoy! |
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Beyond the
Brush - Springgate Art
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(801) 856-7727
