Film and Digital
Tim Trompeter
New York, NY
Tim Trompeter’s career as a visual artist has been multi-faceted and experimental. An avid draftsman since childhood, his formal studies included painting and philosophy classes at the University of Colorado at Boulder and graduate work in color theory and conceptual art under artist Donald Brook at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia.
Profound personal contact with diverse cultures informs his world view: a formative year was given to solo backpacking with camera and sketchbook throughout Australia's outback, Southeast Asia, India and the high Himalayan region of Ladakh before settling in New York City to practice abstract painting at the Art Student’s League. Developing a cross-cultural visual language became a central concentration following his Asian travels, with an emphasis on exploring the interface between culture and nature.
Photographic opportunities knocked and prompted a move to Paris where Tim worked for a decade in fashion and portraiture while collaborating on publications with poets associated with the avant-garde “Language” movement.
Back in New York, his deep experience with digital picture-making was jump-started by attending a Photoshop immersion course for visual professionals in 1991 - the advent of the digital revolution - at the renowned Kodak Center for Creative Imagery in Camden, Maine.
Tim Trompeter’s photographic work has been featured in publications in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., France, Italy, Germany, and Japan. His fine art prints have been exhibited internationally, and are included in public and private collections worldwide.
Tim resides in New York City with his wife and family and maintains studio workspaces in Tribeca in Manhattan and in an isolated village in the French Pyrenees.
Artist's Statement
I simply want to translate overlooked and unremarkable details into pictures to marvel at. Using both photography and digital technology I discover a childlike surprise at what is unexpected in the pictures I make.
The starting point of decorative art shows itself in the blanket of vegetation so often trampled underfoot. This ever-changing magic carpet holds the faint whispering voices of the ancients sharing a secret code that transcribes a basic, simple fact.
The multi-layered complexity of life is reflected in representations of forest growth regenerating itself upon the remains of past decay. For every fresh sprig, there's a dead husk. This should not be an uncomfortable truth, but, sometimes it is.
I was privileged to spend a few days this past summer in the Low Country, tramping around Habersham and environs with my film camera. I was almost consumed by invisible insects, but, more to the point, I was awed by the fecundity and opulence of the local flora and this abundance comes through in the work.
I use macro photography as an exploration of details that become dramatized by a radical change in scale. The photos would like to say: look again and think again - if they could speak.
Maybe pictures have a story to tell and maybe they don't.
After all, we each bring our own story with us, then we interpret the world through our story as if it is a lens or a filter on a camera.
We each expect something different from a picture: one person wants to recognize and remember while another prefers pretty colors. I want to wonder about everything, which leads me to a good dose of abstraction --- for me it works like an open window letting in a pleasant breeze.
When I work on a set of pictures I try to arrive at some essence of the lines and contours: draining away the color or reversing the image and re-coloring it brings me closer to seeing markings and gesture I missed the first time around. It's not a matter of normal or abnormal, like or unlike, this or that, it's simply a refresher, an invitation to look again. With luck, it's a little mystery. T.T.