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...Photographer and Wood artist.
For more info and pictures please visit my website at www.seanhellman.com
I am an artist working in two different media: wood and photography. I live and run my business on Dartmoor in the South West of England.Myspace Layouts - Myspace Editor
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........................As a woodworker and photographer, I am only too aware that it is necessary to cut trees down and saw them up in order to make both functional and beautiful artefacts. I do the same with images of trees, cutting them up and producing unexpected results whose beauty draws us in.
These images have been created to pay homage to these most wondrous organisms, with which we share our planet. Trees are essential for all life on the Earth; they maintain healthy soil, air, climates and water supplies. All human civilizations would be very different without the use of trees for shelter, fire, food, books, etcetera.
Celebrating the tree is just one aspect of these images; they are also referential to sacred art: that of the stained glass window in churches and cathedrals; the mandalas of the East, and in some instances (‘walnut’ image) the art of Islam.
I also am interested in how we observe and perceive or environments and how the camera is used as a window on the world; and how, by use of simple cut-and-paste to create symmetry, we can reveal very different dimensions to initial impressions.
It is possible that we often see things in nature which are not exactly that which they appear to be... I once stood stock still, 3 metres away from a pheasant for over 5 minutes before it turned into dead bracken stems! I love these perceptual shifts. To be able to see things in ‘another’ way is the root of creativity and new ideas within whatever sphere you work.
I usually have an idea of what will happen with my photographs when I take them, but the full details only reveal themselves after completion. ‘Oak, Dewarstone’ is a particular favourite. I see it as the archetypal World Tree, as represented in many mythologies and religions: with its roots in the Earth or Lower World, the trunk in our Middle World and its head and branches in the Upper World.
’Alder Buckthorn, Spitchwick’ was a case of being in the right place at the right time; one cubic inch difference in 3-d space, and this image would not have come into being. I have tried finding this precise, minute, point again several times as I only have one photograph; but to no avail. The image represents to me, male and female polarities meeting; love; the birds and the bees; transformation; sex.