metamorphosis

The art of “metamorphosis” is fine art grunge photography. For me it starts with a photograph (or two) and melds those with textures, text, composites and composition into a piece of art that has more meaning than the individual components. The artist and the viewer can look upon this art from the colored prisms of their lives and experiences. The artist knew where he was going when he developed the art and knew from the depths of his soul what the final image represented. The viewer may see something totally different, but still as meaningful and as lasting as the artist meant it to be.

The butterfly develops through a process called metamorphosis. This is a Greek word that means transformation or change in shape. Butterflies, moths, beetles, flies and bees have a form called complete metamorphosis. The young stage (called a larva) is very different from the adult stage. There are four stages in the metamorphosis of butterflies and moths: egg, larva, pupa, and adult.

This butterfly represents a metaphor of my defined stages of life: birth, growth, faith and death. I started this composition with my image called “Monarch Transparent” that was taken at the Phoenix Desert Botanical Gardens in their fall butterfly exhibit of 2009. This popular exhibit is housed in an enclosure with hundreds of butterfly’s that are feeding on the plants in the exhibit.

I combined my butterfly image with my stylized image of a statue on the grounds of the Amara Resort that I called the “Hands of God” to represent faith. By surrounding these original images with grunge-like stalky, vector graphic lines in the background and textures that both cloud the meaning of the images while bringing the components into a relationship with each other. I followed up with text that brings the art into a more understandable context for the viewer or the art collector to come to their own interpretation of the art.

Fine art with grunge is a technique that I utilize to imagine a new context around my images that does not have to represent what I originally captured in the camera.
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