Art Space Talk: Dominic Rouse (Part 3)

THE EMPTINESS OF THE LONE & DISTANCED LOVER by Dominic Rouse

This is Part 3 of my interview with Dominic Rouse. To return to Part 2 click, HERE

BS: What are your thoughts concerning the internet and utilizing the World Wide Web in order to gain exposure for your art? In your opinion, why is it important for artists to embrace the internet?

DR: The internet is a wonderful marketing opportunity which I attempt to exploit as much as I can. As I live in a remote part of the world I could not operate effectively without it. It is now an accepted mode of business contact and a wonderfully immediate way in which to get work under the noses of those you think might be interested. Most of my sales and other leads are initiated via internet contact.

BS: Will you be involved with any upcoming exhibits?

DR: Last year I shipped an exhibition to the States which was shown at a number of venues and has just finished its initial ‘tour’ with a four month showing at the 21c Museum in Louisville, KY curated by William Morrow, director of the International Contemporary Art Foundation.

‘Haunted by a Painter’s Ghost – Symbolism & Photography in the Digital Age’ is now available as a travelling exhibit aimed at University Museums where I hope it will form an interesting fit with their digital art departments as well as those of art history and mythology.

For those who may be interested www.hauntedbyapaintersghost.com has all the details of the exhibition including installation views, merchandising opportunities and shipping, insurance and rental information.

Beside this I will be exhibiting my work at Verve Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe NM in a joint show with Douglas Ethridge between March 19 and May 8 2010.

TEA DANCE by Dominic Rouse

BS: Do you have any concerns about the art world at this time?

DR: None that I did not already have before. The price of my work is far removed from the dizzy heights where an economic downturn affects me greatly and I am looking to the future with a degree of optimism.

BS: There have been several stories involving copyright infringement in the mainstream press as of late. What is your stance on copyright? Do you see strong copyright as a reflection of artist rights in general? Or do you feel that copyright restricts creativity? Do you have a stance on this issue?

DR: Well, I don’t take a newspaper and I don’t watch television so I am not the best person to be discussing current events. However, I do believe that an artist should have the right to benefit from the creation of his work and that laws should be in place that discourage others from using his work for their own financial gain without first seeking his permission.

I was pleased when the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act was passed in UK in 1988 and especially so as the Association of Photographers (of which I was a member) involved itself in the drafting stages, helping to safeguard the rights of photographers to control the use of their work.

All that having been said, my experience of the law is that it is the perverse plaything of the aggressive and that Lady Justice is a woman of easy virtue who is bought and paid for by rich and powerful men and then given, when least needed, to those least deserving of her. So I won’t be placing too much trust in any laws that do exist to protect my work from abuse.

SHULAMIT & MARY by Dominic Rouse

BS: As you know, the economy has been hard. Have you had to change-- or should I say adapt-- your practice due to the economy?

DR: My thinking is that now is the time for us artists to be working hard on our marketing efforts so that when the tide does turn and the economy starts to improve we will be in a strong position to take advantage of the opportunities that will inevitably become available to those who are ready and prepared to take them.

It is a frustrating reality of the art world that we need to spend at least as much time on our marketing plans as we do on making our work. I have found that as difficult as it can be to produce worthwhile imagery it is as nothing as compared to finding an audience for that work in the marketplace.

BS: Finally, is there anything else you would like to say about your art?

DR: To take a piece of paper, coat it with a gelatin in which are suspended a million silver halides and then to allow first light and then chemicals to caress it in such a way that they leave behind an imprint of one's soul is an exquisite joy that no amount of criticism can diminish. I do not have ambition as such, every completed piece is an ambition achieved.



This is the conclusion of my interview with Dominic Rouse. To return to Part 1 of the interview click, HERE

You can read more of my interviews by visiting the following page-- www.myartspace.com/interviews. Feel free to discuss the interview and the art of Dominic Rouse on the myartspace.com Forum-- www.myartspace.com/forum

Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin
Senior Editor
myartspace.com
www.myartspace.com
Myartspace Blog on Twitter
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Art Space Talk: Dominic Rouse (Part 2)

STRANGE FRUIT by Dominic Rouse

This is Part 2 of my interview with Dominic Rouse. To return to Part 1 click, HERE

BS: What about other influences? For example, are you influenced by any specific artists?

DR: My work is regularly put into the surrealist bracket which I don’t necessarily agree with. I read an article recently in which I and other photographers producing “imaginative” work were described as The New Symbolists and I am much more comfortable with this designation.


However, I do admire the works of Magritte and Escher and their like and I guess their influence is evident in some of my work. There are occasions when my prints are mistaken for etchings and this I attribute more to their detailed tonal structure rather than the influence of any particular artist.

Perhaps it is literary rather than visual artists that I respond to. My work contains references to Kafka, Larkin, Nietzsche and John Martyn amongst others and their words have often been the starting points for images. Nietzsche particularly provides rich pickings. Strangely perhaps, photographers don’t particularly inspire me though I do appreciate the work of Witkin, Koudelka and the Parke-Harrisons.

DON'T WALK AWAY RENÉ by Dominic Rouse

BS: So what is the specific message you strive to convey to viewers? Do you adhere to a specific philosophy as far as your work is concerned?

DR: “When I lie, I am closer to the truth than documentary photography.” is a quote from the Czech photographer Tono Stano which in my view exposes superbly well the dichotomy of the camera. There is a tendency for people to believe the camera’s lies and advertising executives and newspaper editors exploit this delusion remorselessly.


The misguided belief in the veracity of the camera and the almost spiritual obligation placed on its practitioners to use it as a kind of adjunct to the Ten Commandments has, in my view, resulted in clamorous praise for many frankly uninteresting photographs.

A man may point his camera at the atrocities of war and earn the Pulitzer Prize, another may point his camera at sexual intimacy and earn himself a judge’s ire but what is war photography if it is not pornography for the power hungry perverts who demand the right to censor our lives?

That a work of art that is prohibited in a given age becomes in time valued and admired, informs us that the morality of today serves as no useful guide to the morals of tomorrow and further reveals the transient nature of the certainty which moralists of every age so confidently profess. There is no surer sign of ignorance than certainty and those who tell you that they have all the answers are quite simply not asking the right questions.

I am interested in the unseen and the obscene as an appreciation of the obscene leads to a greater understanding of beauty and the exploration of the hidden self leads to a greater understanding of others. Language limits our capacity to understand, art does not.

The point is that the censored camera is no more an instrument of truth then the mouth or the pen and to laud its dubious capacity for honesty is to undermine its higher values. We may use a paintbrush to paint the living room or decorate the Sistine Chapel and even the dullards amongst us can discern which of these is the greater achievement.

Simply put, the camera’s misleading association with ‘the truth’ has led to it being under-utilized and the time has arrived when we can at last use it to produce works of imagination that will in time bear comparison with the highest forms of art.

As an aside, one might argue that because of the prevalence of the camera and its overuse - because every day throughout the world millions of images are made by millions of people - the ability to produce a memorable image using a camera is a far greater achievement than to do so using paints, brushes and a canvas where competitors are fewer. Indeed, I sometimes wish that I could paint badly as there appears to be money in it.

ONCE A CATHOLIC by Dominic Rouse

BS: What are you working on at this time? Can you give our readers some insight into your current work?

DR: I have been in marketing mode for longer than I intended over the past few months and the production of new work has suffered accordingly. I don’t see myself working in themes or on particular projects. Whatever he may tell you to the contrary an artist is ultimately a spectator of self because there is no subject more revealing. I view the folio as an ongoing body of work which will presumably end with my demise or some less abrupt form of disability.

I don’t feel comfortable discussing work before it is completed but I would say that I have no immediate plans to change direction drastically as there is still much to explore within the current style of work.


To read Part 3 of my interview with Dominic Rouse click, HERE

Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin
Senior Editor
myartspace.com
www.myartspace.com
Myartspace Blog on Twitter
www.twitter.com/myartspace_blog

Art Space Talk: Dominic Rouse (Part 1)

Digital imaging tools are now providing the creative freedoms previously the reserve of painters and the fine art digital print is now regarded equally as favorably as the traditional darkroom photograph. The digital domain almost 're-invented' photography and has been embraced by those photographers who felt hampered by the technical constraints of the old analogue processes.

One such practitioner is the photographic artist Dominic Rouse, described by America's BW Magazine as a "master of digital manipulation" and whose superbly-crafted black and white silver prints were lauded by the editor of the British Journal of Photography as "masterpieces" when 'Haunted by a Painter's Ghost' was exhibited in London.

Brooks Jensen, the editor of LensWork Publishing described Rouse as "one of the most interesting photographic artists working today" and compared his photographs to the paintings of Pieter Bruegel, Hieronymus Bosch and René Magritte. Rouse's work is certainly dark in tone and has a visionary edge that does bear comparison with the likes of Bosch & Breugel but it goes beyond that.

His provocative fantasies provide endless opportunities for speculation and possess qualities that force the viewer to suspend both belief and disbelief in unison. His prints are not only challenging and alluring but are also impeccably crafted things of beauty providing seamless transitions between the world of contemporary digital art and the timeless qualities of large format photography.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION by Dominic Rouse

Brian Sherwin: Dominic, what can you tell us about your academic background concerning art? Did you study art formally? Tell us about your art studies in general-- any influential instructors?

Dominic Rouse: I didn’t study art as such but I did study photography for four years after completing my secondary education. On leaving school I took a year’s press photography course which led to a five year career in photojournalism and then I returned to college for three years to study commercial photography as I felt that I needed to broaden my horizons.

This second stint of my photographic education took place at the Blackpool & Fylde College of Further Education where I was fortunate to come under the tutelage of the ‘Blessed Trinity’ of Roger Goodwill, Gordon Read and most especially Geoff Clark who were each inspirational educators. Twenty-five years after leaving Blackpool I am still in touch with Geoff and many of the lessons I learned from him then remain valid today.

Another lecturer who deserves mention is Ted Gray who taught technology which was my special area of interest. It was at Blackpool under his guidance that I learned to make improbable imagery using multiple exposure techniques which gave me a pretty good living until the arrival of Photoshop.

LADIES-IN-WAITING by Dominic Rouse

BS: Tell us about yourself. At what point did you gain an interest in creating visual art?

DR: Now that is an excellent question! If we assume that press photography and advertising photography do not constitute “visual art” (and I don’t think they do) I would say that it wasn’t until twenty years into my photographic career that I was in a position to make the images that I really wanted to make. It was at that point in mid-1996 that I bought my first workstation and finally the images that filled my head and my sketchpads started to appear as two–dimensional realities.

Between 1996 and 2000 I effectively put my fine art on the back-burner while I built up a library of saleable stock imagery consisting largely of older commercial work revamped in the computer. In 2000/01 I finally gave up commercial work altogether and concentrated solely on my fine art prints.

ECCE HOMO by Dominic Rouse

BS: Can you tell us about your art? Give us some insight into the thoughts behind your art.

DR: I consider it my good fortune to have been ‘classically trained’ in the skills of the large format photographer and also among the first photographers to explore the potentials that the new digital tools have given us. It is my belief that the digital realm has granted to us photographers a freedom of expression previously reserved for painters and that this new freedom combined with the traditional photographic processes has the potential for great things.

Art is often defined as the search for truth and beauty and many an artist sets out to reveal the truth but quickly discovers that there is no such thing. He is left to give his honest impression of the lies which is the closest that Man has to a truth. An artist who is only interested in the truth will soon find himself unemployed. I would define my photographs as expositions of the fallacy we know as truth and I might add that beauty is measured in degrees of deceit, the greater the beauty the greater the deceit. Nonetheless, I am addicted to beauty though unfortunately I am a habit that beauty has managed to kick. It is comforting to consider that if all that existed was beautiful, beauty would cease to exist.

Perhaps my images have the potential for truth as they are inaccurate representations of reality.

GO-BETWEEN by Dominic Rouse

BS: Can you discuss your process in general? Are there any specific techniques that you utilize?

DR: My images are produced as toned silver gelatin prints in limited editions of eight and sixteen. They are hand-made in a traditional 'wet' darkroom using an enlarger and photographic paper developed and then bleached and toned using chemical solutions.

When collecting the elements that I need to compose an image I shoot on colour transparency material because it is much more scanner friendly than negative material which is designed to be projected onto photographic paper and has a coarser composition which shows up all too readily as granularity in high resolution drum scans.

Once all the elements have been digitized then the compositing begins. When finished, the file is written to black and white negative material using a film recorder which is essentially the scanning process in reverse.
This film is processed in the usual way and from the resulting negative the prints are made.

It might be worth mentioning that digital negatives are often better than those made in a camera because of the controls that imaging software offers. One obvious advantage is the 'sharpening' filter which, used with discretion, produces a crisper negative that contributes enormously to print quality.

To read Part 2 of my interview with Dominic Rouse click, HERE
Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin
Senior Editor
myartspace.com
www.myartspace.com
Myartspace Blog on Twitter
www.twitter.com/myartspace_blog