My fascination with shadows shows in this photo that I took while walking my two dogs. Shadows offer simplistic form and yet are not always static or obvious in nature, giving themselves up for interpretation as to the nature of the situation and/or the object itself. I frequently use silhouettes in my paintings because they play off of detailed images so well and offer repetition, depth, and a kind of mystery to the picture. It makes people take another look at the images and think a little more. I remembered us talking in class about making art/sculpture draw the viewer in to look and then look again..not just to glance at the surface or obvious features but to actually engage them in the activity of digging deeper and reflecting upon its meaning to them on a personal level. I think shadows lend themselves well to this type of exploration.
As I walked along that afternoon with my dogs, I started to notice the flow of the shadows alongside us and how the images changed according to the lighting and direction of our path. I particularly like the composition of this one because of the linear connection between the forms made by the leashes and the tilted perspective that the shadow gives. It very much feels "in motion" to me when I look at it.....kind of an energy too in the picture.
I really enjoyed this picture, because before reading your caption I thought it was shadow of something completely different. Isn't amazing that if you see something at a different angle or just a smaller portion of what the artist saw....we interpret it so differently.
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