What exactly are you looking at?
Each abstract canvas you see on this site is rendered from a single in-camera image.
Using the digital capture as a base, I use very ordinary photographic digital editing techniques and also layer, blend, and filter an image's pixels to explore and render hidden structures and patterns in what are mostly images of primal energy in motion. I don't cut, paste, collage, or in any other way alter the base image. In most cases, the original image is water moving through the Columbia River Gorge: either one of the many arterial waterfalls, or the Columbia River itself.
I regularly visit and photograph this region, which is less than an hour from my home. I am more drawn to the constantly changing, energetic event of the water encountering wind, sunshine, rain, and the earth herself and to the changing doorways and forms this event creates than I am in the full trajectory of story of the cascade tumbling over a cliff and descending to earth. It was the desire to explore and render this aspect of a waterfall that drew me to explore this approach.
In general, I tend toward abstraction. Some of my more realistic work will also give you a key as to where I come from and how I have been fed and influenced. For instance, in The Curve you will find a series-in-progress of juxtapositions of the American Southwest and the great civilizations of Europe, where I have lived for about seven years total of my adult life.
Gehry Peix and Fruiting Tree. Olimpic Port Barcelona, 2012.
Most of this work is available for purchase as editioned fine art prints in metallic or matte finishes (usually, it depends on the print). A few open editions will also be available. To find out more, please contact us directly via the sidebar to the left, and we will be honored to assist you. We also greatly look forward to making a changing selection of prints and cards physically available in my small studio located in the center of the Alphabet District of Northwest Portland, Oregon.
This site is currently in "studio visit' mode. That is, it will tend to fill out and/or structurally refine, as the site continues to develop.
Want to keep informed? May I suggest subscribing to my judiciously published newsletter, which is unlikely to be sent out more than once a month (you can also find the link in the column to the left). That is, notwithstanding the rare inspiration emergency.
Please keep scrolling for more details about the work and the visual dimension of this site and look to the left side of the page for other ways to stay in touch.
Thank you and warmly,
Deborah Bergman