James Robert Durant

Artist Statement:
Bridging an intangible gap.
The power of a memory or a small glimpse of time is an underestimated entity. Everyone has old photos of friends, family, and others in candid moments which delineate years passed; images which bond and befriend only to those associated to the dusty album they came from.
What do these images convey to the general viewer? What parallel associations are invoked and shared by the owner of the images, with their sentimental baggage, and a foreign stranger, one who has no prior nostalgic engagement? My work contains remnants of photos from the past, but is predominantly photographed myself to begin the bridging of an intangible gap. Using several elements, the image is manipulated by hand to adopt the era of several decades ago.
Using bright acrylics, wax, aluminum, rivets, wallpaper, tapes, power tools, and anything else that harbors the final composition I explore this gap. These elements act as tools of association to the foreign stranger in hopes that the gap of sentimentality and affiliation becomes secondary to a communal understanding.