Philosophy of Fine Art Practice

 

Philosophy of Art – Art and creativity in peoples consciousness is all things to all people. Art is a profound reflection of man’s relationship with life and our desire for self expression, communication and creativity. The visual, emotional, cerebral and spiritual experiences that are foundational to life. Significant points of embarkation, discovery and understanding that lead to change and renewal. Art and creativity is our intervention with life which fills our lives with meaning and generates new ideas, processes and actions that help shape life as we know it. Art is a way of experiencing and learning.

Our engagement with art, culture and the constant flux of the world defines our sense of destiny and who we are as peoples living in different cultures, from small groups of people to whole societies. Culture is a social heirloom passed down the generations which imparts significance and meaning to our way of life and remains open to re-interpretation, manipulation and is in a constant state of flux. Art is an ever changing entity .

Art and creativity is a force that offers profound insight, balance and meaning to my life and manifests intimate experiences of the beautiful, the mysterious and the sublime. It imparts new meanings and generates new ideas, concepts and associations. Art is something that fabricates personal myth. Signs that inform and guide us on life’s path and bring ephemeral moments of private meaninginto being. The many hidden meanings that lie on the edge of consciousness. Art and creativity is a celebration of living in all its entirity and makes me who I am.

Art is challenging and engaging and takes us on a resonant journey of personal learning facilitating an intimate process of communication with self and the world we build around us. It shapes who we are as individuals. Our own authenticity is the driving force with which we live life. It gives us happiness, fulfillment and times of deep celebration and joy. Within our present milieu where cultural values are becoming homogenised and losing their individualism and autheticity, art and creativity has the definite potential to fill the void that the capitalist dream leaves in its wake

A contemporary fine art website by artist, Andrew Johnson. Traditional and digital media: video art, sound art, fine art photography, fine art painting and collage, digital art, text compositions and website design.

 

Photo Gallery-Photography Art, Black and White Photography, Original Art Paintings, Collage and Video Art

Landscape Photography-Photo Gallery

Landscape Photography

Photo Gallery

 

landscape photography photo gallery

Fine Art Photographs of South Wales MIners, Collieries, Pits and Coal Mines – South Wales Coalfield | Taff Merthyr Colliery Documentary Photography

 

Fine Art Photography and Documentary Photography

Artist and photographer, Andrew Johnson, spent four years working photographically alongside the miners of Taff Merthyr Colliery, South Wales, until its closure in 1993. Working empathically with the miners he produced a large body of photographic work which was widely exhibited nationally.

His background of having been brought up in the South Wales Valleys, the same mining communities that played a key role in developing the social and political structures that helped build our country, was a great influence on him. Through his work at the colliery he experienced the infamous, local community spirit and identity which underwent massive social upheaval during those turbulent times, influences that were to reshape the life of a generation of people.

Taff Merthyr Colliery saw times not only of great prosperity and productivity, but also periods of despair. Technological and geographical difficulties often accounted for falls in productivity, where pits were deemed to be uneconomic, and could be closed within a period as short as three months. This was the Official Review Program! Contracts with the newly privatized electricity companies soon expired; subsidized foreign coal was now in competition with unsubsidized British Coal.

The miners fought hard to keep the pits open, frequently increasing productivity by 200- 300 per cent which was never enough for the government.

He saw many miners taking voluntary redundancy, it was their easiest way out of the uncertainty that being a miner had become for them.

In 1984 the the workforce in the South Wales coalfield was over 22,000 men. No deep coal mines are now left in the South Wales Valleys since the closure of Tower Colliery in 2008. Tower Colliery was bought by the miners in 1994, despite government attempts to close it having deemed it uneconomic. The South Wales valleys reached the end of an era and their way of life was to change forever.

Fine Art Photographs of South Wales MIners, Collieries, Pits and Coal Mines for Sale.

Open and limited edition, fine art photographs will be available to purchase on the website in the near future.

The above photographs are low resolution copies of prints. All photographs for sale are printed from very high quality, digitally scanned, Medium Format negatives.

 

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Fine Art Photography-Photographs for Sale

Fine art photography, documentary photography, portraiture, landscape photography and fine art photoworks. Documentary-based and landscape-based articulations of empathy, together with more freely exploratory constructions of photoworks. Open and limited editions of fine art photographs and prints  available to purchase on the artist’s website.

Fine Art Photography Website

Sound Works

A Walk is a Measured Distance – 03′34.

An interactive experience between the artist and the landscape around him (see attached map for geographical reference). Time, placement and aesthetics.

Walking in a continuous loop on a small rectangle of gravel, with a microphone attached to the end of a walking stick, held out in front of the artist, an audio recording / dialogue becomes the testament / manifestation of this experience.

Sound Art Audio Recording

Fine art photography- book concept

Photography and Art . In photography, most photographs are made in a brief moment, a split second where a particular event becomes unique, frozen within the continuum of time. Photographs exhibit a paradigm shift between the present and the past whose key holds an unique meaning for each of us; something that isn’t immediately apparent. The photograph is nebulous and mesmeric and has a quality that is deeper and more profound than just the object that it appears to be. Photography is the confluence of chance, observation and memory. Photography and Art tap into the very life force that drives us. Our sense of the other worldly and mysterious and the profound experiences that enrich our lives and take on a spiritual quality. Photographs reflect our dreams, wishes, wants, and insecurities – a panopoly of memories and emotions, drives and intents. Visual images serve as an abstract representation of the personal and collective unconscious and bring moments of private meaning into being. Photography has its own, unique authority existing through a combination of the elements it is composed of, whilst in the same instant, confirming a reflection of our own approaching mortality. There is a photographic paradox of death present in the photographic, visual image.

CONTEMPORARY FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY

Fine Art Collage and Painting

Fine Art Painting and Collage – a Construction of Image Works

Fine Art Photography

Fine art photography, documentary photography, landscape photography, photojournalism. Photographs of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and Cuba, Central America (Latin America). Fine art photoworks by photographer and artist, Andrew Johnson. Open and limited edition Fine Art Prints and photographs for sale on website in near future.

Fine Art Photography, Documentary Photography, Landscape Photography : Photo Gallery

Video Art

Video Art: Dream Elegy is a video work that explores the relationship between a dream narrative, spoken by the artist, and the subtle evocation of moving images of a ruined pier structure; a hypnagogic dialectic is created between image and viewer.

Video art

video art

Existential Art & the Role of Play

Existential Art and the Role of Play: The dream of intelligence, influence, perception and understanding, logic and expectation, traces of what may have been and what quite wasn’t, superstition, myth and the rational mind, the reverie of sleep and the function of chance, knowledge and transformation, thoughts and actions, the healing potential of art and creativity, the point of the archer’s arrow, life’s mirror of self realisation, art as an ongoing stream of experiences.

Construction of creative ideas by artist, Andrew Johnson

Text Works, Idioms, Abstractions, Surrealism

Text Works, Idioms, Abstractions, Surrealism