As a person, I question what I am seeing.  As an artist, I question how I am seeing.  Through questioning the relationship between the ‘what’ and the ‘how’, I have come to the conclusion that perception is not concrete, nor is it consistent from one person to the next.  In fact, it is quite subjective; it is filtered through past experiences that make up our individual personalities and lives, framed and contextualized to bring new perspective to present circumstances and situations. My work conveys this idea of subjectivity, and our ever-changing relationship with our perceptions of the world and our place within it. I look for metaphors in the world around me to visually communicate my ideas. 

Personal memories inspire my narratives, but I use familiar objects as metaphors so that a larger audience can connect with the work and relate their own experiences to mine.  Windows and water are two surfaces that surround us everyday but, quite often, go unnoticed.  They are the two most prevalent metaphors in my work, because they are both translucent and transparent, and in certain circumstances, the nature of their surfaces changes completely. When light hits them in a particular way, the surfaces act more like mirrors- filtering, and reflecting an illusion of what is behind instead of allowing us to see through to the other side.

I use windows to symbolize the contextualizing frames that our perceptions perpetually pass through, and I use the surface of water to represent the filtering effect our past experiences have on our present perceptions.  Windows and water are parts of the landscape that are not just gazed upon; they also reflect subjective, and somewhat distorted, versions of their environments.  I view the reflections as subjective, like our perceptions, because the image that you see changes as your relationship with it changes. The reflections that you see are dependant on your position in relation to the window or water. 

Other elements disrupt the reflected images, such as wind, waves, people walking behind or in front of windows, ripples, or objects below protruding through the surface of the water, which can distort or warp what we see. I use these specific types of physical phenomena as metaphors within the larger, more generalized metaphors: windows and water.  Like a pebble skipping across a pond, there are many factors that disturb our perceptions, breaking the clarity of the surface, and rippling our views of reality.  These specific disturbing factors are what I use to begin questioning the truth behind what I see and how I see. 

            I use digital manipulation within my photographs to make my audience question how they see.  I want my images to, at first glance, appear untouched, but after further investigation, reveal my digital disturbances.  I hope my manipulations will spark curiosity in viewers and offer them a new way of thinking about the power and subjectivity of perception.   I also hope my work will force them to reconsider, not only what they see within my images, but also how they see and perceive the world around them.

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