Young Arts

This body of work begins at the threshold where control gives way to chance. I set out to create images free from the structures that usually anchor my photography: no human subjects, no architecture, no mountains, no recognizable horizon. Instead, I wanted to construct the subject from almost nothing, building small, unstable worlds before the lens and allowing them to become landscapes through process, scale, and perception.

The method is part scientific experiment and part artistic surrender. I begin with watercolor and acrylic paint, thinning them with water and isopropyl alcohol before pouring them onto marker paper. The choice of substrate is deliberate. Watercolor paper absorbs pigment almost immediately, fixing color in place before it can fully move. Marker paper resists absorption. It allows liquid to remain active on the surface, where pigment spreads, pools, separates, fractures, and reacts. In this state, the image is no longer something I fully compose by hand. It becomes an event that unfolds in real time, shaped by chemistry, gravity, evaporation, and accident.

I photograph the surface from above with a camera mounted on a tripod, framing sections often no larger than one to three square inches. Through the macro lens, these small areas expand into vast terrains. A pool of pigment becomes a tide line. A bloom of alcohol becomes a crater. A vein of mica becomes a fault line running through stone. Although I am photographing paint, the resulting images suggest abstract work that shows natural form. This transformation of scale is not merely a visual illusion. It is the central purpose of the work.

Each image emerges from a negotiation between intention and surrender. I prepare the materials, choose the colors, adjust the surface, and position the camera, but the final composition is determined by forces I cannot fully command. My role is to remain attentive, waiting for the moment when movement, texture, and form briefly align. In daily life, especially as a student, so much depends on precision, correction, and control. Mathematical theorems, scientific laws, graded work, and the constant fear of error all reinforce the desire to make each mark deliberate and defensible. This project resists that impulse. It treats uncertainty not as failure, but as the condition that makes discovery possible.

In these photographs, a stray mark is not a flaw. It is evidence of motion. A rupture is not a mistake. It is the beginning of a landscape. By allowing natural processes to shape the image, I am searching for a different kind of order, one not imposed by human control but revealed through flow, collision, and settlement. The work asks what becomes visible when I stop trying to dominate the image and instead allow it to become itself.