By
Merrill Shea
Piece description from the artist
Blue and yellow is my favorite color combination. I've explored the two at length within the plant kingdom, but I was wondering where else I might come across them, perhaps presented in a more abstract style. I thought perhaps marble or other decorative, semi precious minerals might offer possibilities.
I wanted various hues of blues and yellows in the same stone. Yellow seemed to be fairly common in the samples I saw, but there was never any blue, only muddy brown.
I had just about given up hope when I realized that to create brown, you have to mix in blue. Sure enough, I was able to isolate and enhance that blue component in Photoshop, the results of which you see.
I was drawn to this series of jasper pieces by their similarities to Jupiter's cloud formations, as well as what the James Webb telescope is revealing to us of our universe.
I've removed a few distracting bits and pieces. But instead of polishing the surface, I've left the white nicks visible, because they remind me of stars. I also decided to leave many of the stone cutter's scratch marks visible in order to add graphic contrast to the swirling, diffuse bands of color.
The slabs are approximately two by three inches in size. The universe in miniature!
Larger rectangular versions of this series, revealing more of the marble features, can be viewed in the Past Projects section.
Merrill Shea began his artistic career as a classical musician and then gradually migrated toward the visual arts. He has worked as a free-lance photographer in the commercial, non-profit and academic worlds throughout Eastern Massachusetts for over twenty-five years. He is entirely self-taught.
Merrill spends at least one month every year traveling primarily throughout New England and the Pacific Northwest. While his oeuvre includes urban imagery, his primary inspiration comes from the natural world. His TurningArt offerings represent a selection from his personal projects, which range from intimate and panoramic seascapes to interpreting the oldest living things on earth: the fantastically gnarled bristlecone pine trees that survive at twelve thousand feet above sea level.
Merrill continues to explore the varieties of color, graphics and texture that are possible within the photographic medium. Like many photographers, he has been influenced by the iconic black and white nature photography of Ansel Adams. In that regard, he has included identical images which he feels are effective both in color and black and white.
Merrill has always been fascinated with the medium of watercolor and has recently been exploring the possibilities of using various computer techniques to produce watercolor-like images from photographs that, in many cases, are indistinguishable from true watercolors.
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