Searching for the Elusive and Illusory Divine

A Meaningful Journey

From the moment I first picked up a crayon and scratched across the wall, I was fascinated with creating images. My parents -- an artist and a musician (if not in profession, at least in avocation) -- supplied plenty of paper, pencils, tape, aluminum foil and scissors, and gave me space to imagine and expand creatively.

I filled empty spaces and quiet moments with imaginary worlds, with images of the stars and cosmos, with poems and stories, with the song of my heart as it cried out from my guitar and piano.

As an undergraduate I delved into sociology, attempting to understand why people relate the way they do. Unsatisfied with both the questions and answers, I pursued religious studies in graduate school and began to prepare for a career as a minister. This route was a wrong turn, mostly because I wanted to ask a different kind of question than was allowed by the strictures of authority. But after returning to my artworks, I discovered that God and meaning had been there all along, regardless of the questions I asked.

There's a deep sense of grace I experience when I creative project feels in tune with my inner quest.

A Visual Method

I picked up a camera in college, a Nikon FG with a basic 50mm lens, and fell in love with photography as a visual medium, less so with the equipment. While I took a long time to refine the method, the way of looking through the lens that I most enjoy was always about getting intimate with a subject, approaching it from a distance to become comfortable with it, and then moving in close, whether through closing the physical distance or through increasing focal length. I've always wanted to explore details of shape and texture, to know a subject's mode of existence.

My primary photographic influences have been Aaron Siskind and Ralph Gibson. Siskind, who was one of the practitioners of photography as an art, studied the abstract patterns he found in decaying architectural elements, like walls. Many of my studies of texture are attempts to understand Siskind's method. Gibson is also a genius of intimacy, focusing on lines and forms.

I once heard Gibson speak at the opening of a show, and he said that it's not the camera that matters, but rather the eye behind it. I think that's true. It's the process, the means of using one's conceptional faculties, that makes photography an artform, not the camera. That's one reason why I often use off-shelf and basic kinds of cameras, simple point and shoot digitals. That way the equipment doesn't get in the way of seeing, but rather facilitates how I want to see.

There are other influences as well.

A Meandering Path

I was raised in the dirt of the US southern countryside. I've lived in various states across the American south, where I've tried being a newspaper editor, a photojournalist, a designer for a creative agency as well as a producer/writer/director for independent short films.

Primarily self-taught as an artist, writer and musician, I have also studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland. My fine art photography has been exhibited both regionally and nationally in the United States.

In 2007 I decided to take a break from normal life, so I left my job at the end of the year and set out on a journey toward horizons, both spiritual and creative. I spent a year and a half living in and traveling around South East Asia, practicing being a poor, starving artist and writer.

I'm currently in the US, again focusing on art and writing, wishing the "poor, starving" part of it wasn't so immediate.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact me at: ronaldkeith@rkartstudio.com