As a child, I spent my days mostly outdoors, armed with an intense curiosity about the world around me, wandering for miles, captivated by the forms of nature and creatures of every sort, daydreaming, looking up to the sky, thinking that this world would “always be”.
Now, compelled to take my wanderlust further afield, I reflect upon issues of place, time, memory, experience, and the convoluted dichotomy of human/nature. Fostered through travels to various parts of the world, my creative practice involves a reinterpretation of the documentary form, generated through a dense, structured, accumulation of local imagery, culled from the past and present.
When traveling and settling into a particular environment, I often function like a typical tourist. With camera in hand, I document and collect data relative to the “new” surroundings, frequenting museums, libraries and scouring online sources to glean and appropriate visual information. Ultimately, this imagery weaves its way into complex, visual atmospheres that promote reflection, and in some small way, contribute to raising consciousness about interconnections and substantive issues surrounding the environs, culture, and history of a particular place in time.
Featured on this web site is work representing a confluence of investigations inspired by artist residencies and travel to numerous locales, including the Netherlands, Spain, China, Korea, Japan, Mexico, Cuba, Costa Rica, Turkey, British Columbia, the Barrier Islands of Louisiana, Death Valley, the Great Basin, among many others. I encourage your feedback. For further details and information, contact me: scottludwigart@yahoo.com.