Rodney Buxton
Alternative Facts: Photography by Any Means
Artist Statement, 2021
My blending of digital photography and digital painting captures my perspective of the vanishing presence of geological formations in several U.S. National and Indigenous tribal parks. Presently, these parks struggle against the effects of climate change, threats of industrialized exploitation and commercial over-development, reduced funding and irresponsible behavior of visitors to the parks. An experience within any of these parks can change relatively quickly as external, non-natural forces impact the landscape in a short span of years rather than over centuries. Initially, I capture images during my extended visits to these parks. Then, I print the images using archival watercolor pigments on textured paper, manipulating these images through digital painting techniques to create the vibrant, hallucinogenic saturated visual tones applied to my photographs. As the visual expression of my experience within these parks, my approach enhances the inherent drama of nature’s monuments, in both perseverance and uncertainty. These pieces are my responses to the awe of nature’s beauty, fears about the destruction of that beauty and the hope that this destruction from outside human forces can be stopped and reversed in some manner.
On display March 1 – April 12, 2021 at the PACE Center Art Gallery:
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