I think I see things in sharp focus across my entire field of vision, but I know I'm actually building a serial composite image as I move my head and concentrate on various details that attract my attention. I also take in the entire scene in a kind of willful straight-ahead stare that lets the edges go out of focus. Photographers reviewing lenses rave about their artistic Bokeh, a term derived from the Japanese word for blur that describes how out-of-focus points of light and reflections are rendered by the lens and captured by the camera.
When I recently wanted to take reference photographs of crosswalk signs from an elevated point of view (see the post below) that include the surrounding street scenes at the edges, I knew I was going to have to select a specific distance from the lens to be in sharp focus, and because of the limitations of the equipment, everything else would be pretty blurry. I'm interested in making the illuminated sign the primary element in these compositions, so it makes sense to hold that plane in sharp focus and let the faces, vehicles and architecture around the edges get fuzzy. Given that most of my paintings have been mostly in sharp focus across the range of "depth" in the scenes I create, it might be a surprise that I aspire to painting more loosely, but I find it very challenging. 15 Seconds is the first of these crosswalk images and I really enjoyed all the wet-in-wet blending to make the transition at the edges of areas of color read properly. I use paints made with walnut oil, which keeps them wet longer than more commonly used linseed oil colors, enabling lots of going back into a boundary area and smearing the colors together without (too much) trouble. The M. Graham paints are locally made in a small plant I visited when I first heard about them. I've been delighted with their intense saturated colors as well as their long open time and non-yellowing whites.
I was recently in San Francisco delivering work to Modernism Gallery, where I'll be having a solo exhibit in the spring of 2018, and I greatly enjoyed another look at SFMOMA's extensive collection of Gerhard Richter "blur" paintings. He's a master of many kinds of painting, and during the period where he painted representational images, many were carefully made to look out-of-focus, and are hauntingly effective. Richter blur paintings
I'm also included in an exhibit of three painters running from September 20th through October 20th in eastern Washington, and a solo exhibit at Helena Fox Fine Art in Charleston, SC in early November where 15 Seconds will be featured. Please contact me for information about the receptions and lecture details.
My wonderful gallery representation: LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM
And as always, you can also contact me directly by email: info@sethtane.com and follow my occasional photo posts on: Instagram