The photography of Fran Gormley is large. Her photographs are about five feet by three feet. With the earth as Gormley’s subject, anything smaller simply wouldn’t convey the emotion and the power she captures through her lens. Mountains and valleys in her hands become the texture and color with which she covers her “canvas.” In a recent series of photographs she explores the landscape of Iceland, one of the most inhospitable places on earth, yet she manages to extract life and exuberance from rocky outcroppings and river beds.
Of her recent trips to Iceland, the Greenwich artist explained: “I’ve become obsessed with it. I plan to return in a few months, I have a small window of time when the minerals come to the surface and create the colors in the work. Iceland is made up of many microclimates. My photographs change people’s opinions of ‘landscape,’ because I treat the medium like a canvas. I don’t crop and I don’t retouch my work. People often tell me the work is uplifting,” she continued.
Shooting from a small plane, her altitude a trade secret, Gormley captures abstract patterns that seem to trick our eyes into believing we are observing either a microscope slide or a panoramic vista. It’s this “vibration” that excites the mind’s eye as we decipher exactly what we’re looking at. Gormley’s Iceland series will be showing at the University of Virginia Business School this Spring.
For more information, visit: http://paletteearth.net or email fran@greenwichmarketing.com, 203-629-1800.
