The above self-portrait I took is a good representation of how photography led me into traditional art. I studied the classic portraits by Rembrandt, Caravaggio, and other painters of the Renaissance as a way to learn how to light and compose a subject for a photograph. And from that I found that the canvas was not that much different than the camera’s viewfinder.
Painting is about learning more than anything else for me. As a photographer it is easy to be so focused literally on the physical and material world that when it came to painting I was then able to take a look beyond the material world and into the world that lies just beyond.
