Starr Tucker Ortega

Artist Statement

I began my life as an artist as a painter. I came to photography relatively late in school but found that I preferred the depth and layering that I was able to create with the photographic medium. I found that my photographs had a painterly feel due to my earlier training. My works tonal qualities, textural components, and layers mimic a painterly process.

When I began to explore photography further, my photographs became abstracted as my paintings had been. In essence, I would create abstract still-life environments to shoot instead of focusing on scenes that occurred in nature. I then discovered the Photogram. These are made solely by painting with light directly on photosensitive paper rather than using a camera, film, and a resulting negative. I am drawn to this medium because it goes beyond the conventional realm of photography. While exploring this alternative photographic process I discovered I was more able to create the depth I wanted to portray than with traditional photography.

I strive to create ethereal and infinite spaces into which the viewer is transported to another world. Often in my work, I am attracted to the portrayal of individual objects within vast spaces and will place organic or biomorphic objects within these planes. Most recently I have begun to add a further dimension to my Photograms and photographs by using them as a canvas for painting and drawing.