When I was nine, I taught myself how to draw by copying photographs out of National Geographic Magazines. I had a little Kodak brownie camera back then too, and was always shooting anything and everyone just for fun.
As an adult, I used a camera along with my oil paints, brushes and other paraphernalia to make art. The photographs I took were translated into paintings later.
I was obedient to every detail the camera captured. At times my camera would seem to make up it's own mind and produce an image that struck me as complete, "finished". So I wouldn't paint it, and I'd put it away.
I stopped using my photographs as reference in 1992 and worked primarily from life and memory. Now I am using the camera again using photographs as a first step in an
unpredictable process. Some of the photos are almost "naked" with only clear layers of wax on top. Others are hand painted with oils, gouache mixed with powdered pigments, penciled in, and buried under layers of encaustic paint (heated pigmented wax).
All artworks are hand manipulated and not altered by a software program.
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..............................................................................................................~ Nancy Catandella