Biography

Combining a love for the natural environment with his photography, Patrick has been exploring the West for the last decade and a half with a large-format camera. He believes the contact print from a large-format negative has been the final step in bringing his vision and his craft together. A great deal of effort goes into each hand-made print; and, done right, it takes on an energy of its own as both a photograph and an art form.

Mostly self-taught, he credits three days spent traveling, photographing, and looking at prints with Morley Baer with infusing his work with a sense of history and an appreciation of the tradition of the contact printing process. Most recently Patrick has turned to platinum/palladium printing as another step in his expression of the landscape.

These days, if not in his darkroom, he and his wife will most likely be traveling back roads in their van searching out new locations and new friends.

Artist Statement

Metaphor has been thought to be the domain of the poet and artist. Rather than argue this truth, I choose to believe that seeing, for all of us, involves metaphor. To the extent that we see well, we are all poets and artists.

Metaphor is a sense of a habit, which allows us to perceive the large from the small, the pattern from chaos, that which is not expected to that which is accepted. In new ways it allows us to see with eyes expanded beyond the literal, the cataloging of perceptions. It allows us to see relationships.

Looking, reacting, and expressing are all the active parts of photography that I practice every time I make an image. Success of an image ultimately is a joint collaboration between you the viewer and the photographer.

To see Patrick's images in our online gallery, click here.

To contact Patrick via e-mail, click here.