Dana L. Walker

artist statement

My work deals with elements of time, fragments of memories, gesture, color, texture… remnants of past, present, future. Using photographic medium, I seek to create intimate portraits of real or re-imagined objects and places, composed, constructed, or abstracted to create new compositions.

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As a child, fairy tales and children’s books such as Alice in Wonderland, 1960’s TV shows such as Outer Limits and Twilight Zone provided creative inspiration. I was drawn to adventures in which the main character could travel or be transported from one world to another simply by falling into a hole or stepping through a “looking glass.” With a 1960s episode of the Twilight Zone called “Little Girl Lost,” [in which a little girl falls out of bed and through a portal to the 4th dimension; her parents can hear her crying but can’t find her in the house], I became fascinated with the notion that one could not only move between two worlds but, at least abstractly, occupy two spaces at once and as a result, I used to walk around the house with a hand-held mirror pointed up at the ceiling, walking through both real and reflected spaces, maneuvering through a re-imagined space filled with inverted ceiling structures, doorways, lights, in a sense, existing in two places at once.

The first time I saw Mark Rothko color-field paintings (around the age of 10), I felt this same fascination… the luminescent colors transported me to another place filled with a sense of awe ...remnants of past, present, future.

© Dana L. Walker, 2022

All images are copyrighted and may not be used without permission.