Community collaborations & Wildlife night vision

Poacher cam, 2019

My many projects over the years have introduced me to the richness of collaboration. The intentional inclusion of others in the creation of work challenges conventional notions of authorship, and expands the material and subject of a project. In painting, the process of collaboration is difficult. Does one share the brush…take turns on the canvas? Or does the collaboration take place on the conceptual level?  I chose to create a community of collaborators –with others helping to identify subjects and locate images to be made into paintings.

Images relayed to me via digital networks are used to render permanent images in paint which externalize the online transmission of the member ideas. Many of the collaboration participants are ranchers. Because of their localities and proximity to wild spaces, they all seem to set up night-vision, motion-activated cameras near water sources on their properties to capture the guests that visit in the night. There is a certain enthusiasm we share for these cameras, a drive to capture image, but also a type of security or surveillance. The magic of these images is heightened by the enthusiasm in sharing them and the corresponding dialogues about the subjects. I will then select a single frame that best describes the event and work it to my satisfaction, then finally sharing the image and my experiences back to the before mentioned rancher.