Passionate Focus 2010 Artists
Kurt Weston
My limited visual acuity - total blindness in my left eye and limited peripheral vision with no central vision in my right eye permits me to see the world much like it appears in an impressionist painting. Using digital magnification, I am able to view and augment images initially seen only through my limited peripheral vision.
For the past several years, I have been experimenting with unusual and altered photographic "views" and "perspectives" that redefine and re-contextualize, for both the sighted and blind communities, the very nature of seeing.
My recent work captures vivid color impressions of wild foliage shot in Oregon and Washington during autumn 2009. These photographs are precisely detailed, color saturated, images offering an unsettling realism. These other-worldly portraits bypass conventional ideas of nature photography by confronting the view with singular instances of strange beauty. Hillsides and parks are experienced in sometimes fleeting, sometimes still, sometimes even out of focus mesmerizing tapestries of living color sweeping the view into the world of my very unique visual aesthetic.
In 2008 I earned my MFA from California State University, Fullerton. My work has been exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC and other venues. In 2009, my work was included in the California Museum of Photography's acclaimed exhibition "Sight Unseen: International Photography by Blind Artists." (Currently scheduled to tour internationally)
To see more of this artist's work, visit www.kurtweston.com
Under the Dwarf Maple
