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Douglas Butler

Doug is a legal aid attorney living with his wife, Jen, in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts where he enjoys exploring the region, making images and writing.

lensandapen.com

[One may] discover how new and beautiful the familiar can be if we actually see it as though we had never seen it before. ~ Joseph Wood Krutch

The local is the only universal, upon that all art is built. ~ John Dewy

In Part One, I offered a roadmap of sorts that I suggest could lead anyone to artistic discovery in expressive image making and creative engagement generally. Here, I explore my journey along that map through my relationship built over years of engagement with a nearby wildlife refuge.

Engagement with Place and Place

Joe Cornish in his masterful Scotland’s Mountains, A Landscape Photographer’s View, described his engagement with Scotland’s “heart and soul . . . its mountainous landscape.” In his introductory essay, Cornish explains that, with respect to his image making, “My goal has been a feeling for place, for mood, depth, intimacy, grandeur, beauty.”

His approach to achieving this goal included an examination of his relationships with those places, professing that “I have tried to learn from the mountains, to make pictures that reflect, even in some small degree, their heart and soul (or perhaps more truthfully, mine).”It was through this exploration of and communion with “a landscape both complex and beautiful,” that Cornish explored the edges of his own image making form. He confessed that his exploration of the “wildest edge of edges” had an impact on him and his image making, admitting that “On the way, I have discovered a new level of patience, application and acceptance to fulfill my ideas of what makes a picture,” substantiating with these words and his magnificent images Galen Rowell’s conclusion that “The most interesting parts of the natural world are the edges, places where ocean meets land, meadow meets forest, timberline touches the heights.” Or known meets unknown.