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John Paul Caponigro’s Vision & Style Statements
July 4, 2014 | Comments Off on John Paul Caponigro’s Vision & Style Statements |
Vision Statement
Forms of environmental art rendered in virtual space, my work brings images conceived in the mind’s eye and held deep within the heart into clear focus.
These poetic journeys portray landscapes as sacred spaces, embedded within the larger web of life, sustaining and capable of generating more life, each with a unique character, spirit, and perhaps even different kinds of consciousness.
Exploring ways of walking through a beautiful world in a beautiful way, I invite others to celebrate with me the miracle that we are not apart from nature but a part of Nature.
These meditations in nature, illuminating the nature of perception and our perceptions of nature, offer inspiration for people to more fully experience and more creatively interact with our natural world.
When we speak of nature, if we replace “it” with “we”, a personal transformation occurs. Revitalize our relationships with nature and we revitalize ourselves.
Style Profile
Composition
I have a strong tendency towards simplicity and at times minimalism.
Space
I pay careful attention i to both the aspect ratio of the frame as well as the proportion of the objects and spaces within them.
I use negative space is used generously.
The negative spaces between and within things is even more strongly felt than the positive volume of objects.
Color
I strike a delicate balance between representing the subtle palette of nature and creating new color effects to promote stronger emotional responses.
I’m fascinated by atmospheric effects, so I favor full spectrum ambient color and light.
I moderate contrast with gradation.
Line
My use of line tends to be simple, smooth and continuous, highlighting contours.
Often, the most important line in and between individual images is the horizon line.
Texture
I use texture to define form and describe space but it’s not a primary concern.
There are a lot of smooth surfaces in my images.
Effects
I use special effects are as accents, rather than the primary subject, unless the subject/effect is light.
Continuity
In most cases, I combine two images into one.
I work in series.
The sequences I create between images often suggest gradual transformations.
Other Characteristics
Both my individual images and my series have musical qualities.
Their volume tends to be more quiet than loud.
Style Statement
When you look at my images you’ll see glowing sands, smoking waters, floating stones, impossible symmetries, enigmatic symbols, and many other mysterious events and states of being. Often, the heavens descend to the earth and the earth ascends to the heavens; always the two are seen in sublime relationships with one another.
Some would say my images are “surreal”, they are fascinated by dreams and imagination, but I use the term “visionary” to avoid limiting our understanding of this sensibility to one twentieth-century art movement, preferring to participate in an eternal universal human impulse that emerges in all cultures at all times whose primary motivation is spiritual.
Though representational my images are not only transcriptions of what I see with my naked eyes but are also explorations of what I see in my mind’s eye. My art explores the many points where the external and the internal inform each other. Specifically, my experiences are shaped by the land I live in and reshaped as I draw them inside me into memory and imagination. Ultimately, our identities are shaped by the views of the world we hold within ourselves; I practice art to expand mine; and I share them with others.
The light within my images is both captured and rendered, sometimes with software and sometimes by hand; it’s not just a quality, not just a property, but also an event; it’s not only a physical light from without but also a spiritual light from within.
Color, our response to light, a phenomenon that happens inside us in response to energies outside of us, serves several functions in my images: it celebrates the unexpected gifts found within the visible world; it supports a suspension of disbelief; it creates an atmosphere charged with emotion. My obsession with atmospheric ambient light and gradation highlights the ever-changing nature of our perception.
My images are less about the objects they contain than they are the spaces they frame. They explore the spaces between things, the spaces within things, and the distances between them. The negative space within my images is far from empty; it’s pregnant with possibilities.
More often than not two or more moments and/or views are presented together in a single image and in special circumstances in more than one image. The elastic time and space between images create a simultaneity that expresses a belief in and a desire for greater integration. The subject of each image can be seen as a fragment of a much larger whole. Each image exists not only in isolation, not only as a part of a series but also in the context of a growing body of images or life’s work.
First and foremost, my images present environments, sets of relationships that are dynamic and interactive. Exploring the spaces of the outside world and the inside world, they create a new space, a meeting place for both.
View more of John Paul Caponigro’s images here.
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