I cannot remember the exact location of this macro photo of quartz and lichen that I constructed as an abstraction. It was made in the late summer -- the digital file says early February 2022.
Looking at the surrounding files I can see that I would have been walking from Dep's Beach back to the car that would have been parked at Kings Beach lookout. It was made whilst on an afternoon poodlewalk as it was around 7pm.
Made whilst wandering in the local Waitpinga bushland on a poodlewalk in the late summer of 2022.
It was a branch of a pink gum, but I can no longer remember where it was exactly.
These colours in the local bushland in Waitpinga caught my eye whilst I was walking through it:
This macro of the bark of pink gum was made whilst I was on a poodlewalk with Kayla. This was in late February. It is a continuation of the kind of abstraction from nature series here and here.
I was taken by the soft colours of the quartz vein amongst the coastal granite rocks in the soft afternoon light:
Wirth summer just around the corner this part of the coast is still in sunlight between 5-6pm when I am on a poodlewalk. It is only rarely that there is cloud cover at this time of the day. This was one of those occasions.
At Kings Head, Waitpinga, southern Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. The background context is this online exhibition at Encounters Gallery.
Suzanne is away in Brisbane and I am minding the 2 standards poodles. So the poodlewalks are within contained areas. Hence the walk along the Heysen Trail to Kings Beach and Kings Head.
This picture is part of an ongoing series that builds up a body of work to provide a supplement to a forthcoming online exhibition at Encounters Gallery:
I am reading this text on Deleuze and abstraction by Brent Adkins as part of trying to understand how different people conceptualize abstraction. This is normally seen in terms of a removal, a paring away, a purification. It is an abstraction from something.
Deleuze has an idiosyncratic view of the abstract, which compared to that of Clement Greenberg or Peter Wolin or Hegel. Whereas Hegel (and people generally) think of the abstract in opposition to the concrete, Deleuze thinks of the abstract in opposition to the discrete. Deleuze views abstract art as being abstract because it produces sensations not representations. Sensations are defined as percepts (new ways of seeing or construing ) and affects (new ways of feeling).
Affects are associated with intensity (or the tendency towards change) and not extensivity (or the movement towards stasis). Abstract is one of the ways that Deleuze thinks through intensity. For Deleuze the abstract is true lived experience. Abstract lived experience is linked to the tendency toward change (the concrete) as opposed to the tendency toward stasis (the discrete).
In the art institution the new is structured in terms of a linear progress as a before and after. The temporal schema is a before abstraction and an after with the before--realism--- seen as negative and modernist abstraction seen as a new enlightened era. However, it is more accurate to see realism and abstraction as co-existing with different layers of strata that are full of dramatic breaks, ruptures in these layers; stopping points, rifts, shafts, with their multifarious interactions. Photography in creating something new can be seen as a bringing together of disparate elements or lines that cross cut its history without being confused with it or being stifled by its conformity.
This macro quartz abstract was made towards the end of the 2019 winter whilst I was on an afternoon poodlewalk with Maleko. It was made on a calm day inbetween the various wild storms that battered the coast.
Some earlier quartz abstractions can be found here and here and here. This is one that I published in my Flickr stream.
Another in the quartz and lichen abstraction series:
This quartz and lichen formation is amongst the coastal granite rocks near Kings Beach Rd in Waitpinga, walking east towards Petrel Cove.
This abstraction was a difficult image to make. I had to wait until the late afternoon for the light, and he quartz was tucked behind some granite rocks on the foreshore just east of Deps Beach and it was not possible to put my body in the space between the granite and the quartz to obtain a low view:
So I had to lean into the space, try and balance my feet on some sharp edges and hold the Sony NEX-7 camera low. Thankfully the camera has a fold out back and so I could focus the image using it.