Inspiration
 Nashormeh Lindo. Photo by Trina Thompson.
"For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity." (Henri Cartier-Bresson) As an artist, I traditionally characterized myself as a landscape painter. I most often made small water colors, working en plein air. I began using photographs as a book mark, for when the light changed or I had to stop working. These photographs provided me with documentary source material, that I would later use in my studio work. I liked framing the compositions like they were paintings. I invested in a better camera, and took pictures from the sky, on beaches, in the mountains, in city parks and the many other “scapes” I encountered while traveling. I became hooked on taking pictures. "Like souls touching, poetry, music, paint, and the camera keep calling, and I can't bring myself to say no!" (Gordon Parks) I used my mother's small Brownie, and later her Polaroid cameras, to record family events and take candid portraits of family and friends. Often, I'd look at pictures of my family and say, "Well, where was I?" My family members would laugh and say, "You took the picture!" I felt so left out, not being a part of the visual record. I became an active participant in these events and memories, by using the pictures in photo-collage compositions, acknowledging my presence in a different way. |
"A picture is worth a thousand words." Every picture tells a story.
I have always been interested in documenting my ideas about family, history, culture, and geography. As a child, I was constantly fascinated by the photos I'd seen on mantlepieces, coffee tables, in bureau drawers, picture albums, and shoe boxes of family members we visited. Incorporating these images into my own work helps to bring these people alive. This led to my interest in portraiture; in observing people interacting with their environments, and incorporating their cultural traditions into everyday living. "The painter constructs, the photographer discloses. (Susan Sontag) I continue to search for new ways to creatively express my feelings about different standards of beauty, of memories and dreams, (both realized and broken), and how some of these experiences are universal. Travel has enhanced this search. Aside from memory, family, history, nature and travel, my inspiration has come from the many artists, mentors, and teachers who have encouraged and influenced my life and work; the wonderful painters, poets, photographers musicians and most of all, the children. They are too numerous to name. Those are my muses. 
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