For decades many of us have come to know artisans such as Bob Ross, James Coleman and most noteworthy Thomas Kincaid. Painting dreamworlds out of the freedom of expression within our hearts and minds. For as long as I can remember I can recall seeing Bob Ross on public television as a young boy painting happy little clouds, trees, rivers and mountains and James Colemans incredible dream work with Disney has long held allure with fans.
While a lot of time has gone by and often, I can only remember these moments as if a blur. Yet in my experiences of how I see the great outdoors, more often than not I see these same painterly like visions gently glide through my minds eye. Often, I will be in a high alpine basin near a fire lookout of ranger station only to see the lights come on after the rangers return from their patrol as the sun sets. When my moment has arrived to capture the glow from the windows of the little cabin and the setting sun illuminates the clouds, I cannot help but think about how these artists before me had also fondly thought about the poetic relationships with light that occur often within our dreams and sometimes in reality as well!
FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY BY ARTIST MARLON HOLDEN TITLED: “HIDEAWAY”
Each of these little marvels of the earth, tucked away in the folds of time only revealing themselves during perfect moments of enchantment. As a child I often and curiously peered upon Thomas Kinkade’s work and marveled at the whimsical details of how the light would cast a glow over the surrounding landscapes as if enchanting and magical. As I grew older, I often thought about such places and knew they were more fiction than reality, places created in between dreams and waking up more than a destination one could visit. However, after years and years of traveling around, I have come to learn that such places do exist in real life. Given the right timing and the right light, I have found these little places to be real! Each and every time I come upon a scene that fits this description, I am always harkened back to childhood memories and the vivid recollections of details always pull me it.
Such was the case when while coming upon this snowy scene in Alberta, Canada. At 3 AM the cold air was a mere 20 below. The snow was so soft, and it was so cold out that it wouldn’t melt upon touching your face. Everything was still and snowflakes would literally come to rest on your nose without melting. The light glowed from this little snow-covered cabin and everything around it was lit up by the emanant warm light. I stood there for well over three hours until just before dawn shooting every angle possible, hoping not to miss a moment of this beautiful place in time. A reminder that once I had left, I could only be hopeful that I had captured that same magic as I had laid my eyes upon with artists work who had come before me.
FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY BY ARTIST MARLON HOLDEN TITLED: “QUIET REPRIEVE”
With each place ventured comes a connection to my very ethos. The magic is alive and well and simply put, I am living my dreams in each and every moment that I am able to experience a new and enchanting place such as these before they were captured in photographs. The reality upon us now to be able to capture such scenes with the technology available to us today is so remarkable. Being able to come across such a scene and know that it was a real moment is literally something that I can hardly imagine possible, yet it is!
Shown below as a case in point is this beautiful little church with a white fence around it. The manicured greens and the ornate stained-glass windows, glowing from within with this warm, soft light. The darkness around reminders of the harshness of the environment and how cold things can be yet from inside beams this beautiful and welcoming light. Moments like this are exactly what comes to my mind when I think of those old artworks from my childhood past. The fairytale like quality of the light and the way they illicit emotive thoughts from deep within. Artists like Thomas Kincade knew that about the psychology of light and fairytales. Allowing your audience to be enchanted with a place or moment in time is the very foundation of bringing others along with you on your artistic journey. In this way, I am reminded constantly of the manner by which we are moved by things that allow for us to connect and share moments, be changed from within and allow magic to grab ahold of our hearts.
FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY BY ARTIST MARLON HOLDEN TITLED: “WAI’OLI DAWN”
From the very moment I set foot in a new place or destination, I always keep my eyes open to potentially new places that would offer up the chance opportunity to re-create those emotions and feelings. Often times I am looking to merge the place where dreams and reality come together into real life settings that existed in time whether it be fleeting or not. The moments that separate a dreamlike scenario from a simple documentary image are hard to find and rarely present themselves, yet in the moments that they do reveal themselves, I certainly feel a childlike wonder overtake me.
Whether it be an old log cabin, a church, a landscape, an old pathway or even a lighthouse the one thing that I can say is that most often these places are always the combination of the place, the atmosphere and generally there being something old, galvanizing and grounding about a place. Somewhere with rustic charm and warmth emanating from the bones of a location will certainly do the trick! However, I rarely have the opportunity to seek these places out, simply because there are not enough of them in this world that others know about in order to search them out or that the mood in the very moment that you see it could never be reproduced authentically in order to convey the emotions in which you see from the images that I was lucky enough to come across when I did. A perfect example of this is when the waves are crashing up against the rocks after a brisk Northwesterly, the storm was just clearing and the clouds began to gently light up in the pre-dawn sun, still dark enough to see the glow from the lighthouse high up in the tower, a beacon of hope to seafaring mariners who have been battered by the storm. These significant moments are transporters to a different place, evocative of everything we see and feel in our dreams and most often think of as not possible in real life.
In many ways, I think this is the very reason why artists like Thomas Kincade, James Coleman or Roy Tabora created the artworks that they did. I believe that they believed in dreams and transporting their viewers to a different place, somewhere magical that exists, yet most often only when you sleep. My simple goal and desire as a photographic artist are to find and reveal these artworks as real places and not only figment of our imagination within our dreams. It often requires a lot of homework, most often I have to come back to a place many, many times and wait for the right weather conditions to present themselves. The capture of a moment in real life is defined by the atmosphere and the quality of the light which often requires a massive amount of effort, whereas with a palette and a paintbrush it can be created with the strokes of a genius behind the brush. In either scenario, the creativity, vision and the desire to draw someone into the scene is an engineered and very sophisticated and well directed creation.
With that said it is no wonder that great artists such as Thomas Kincade did so very well during their long and exemplary careers. Whatever you think about these artists personally is not the case in point, however their ability to have an idea and create that moment for you to feel a certain way as a result is something of a magical talent and I believe that it is not a long-gone conclusion to believe that this is still a very alive and well philosophy. When we dream, we are brought back often to our childhood, happy times, safe times or places where we would long to be if provided the opportunity. As a result I am always on the lookout for places and moreover conditions which will allow me to follow in these artisans footsteps, replicating that same, authentic feeling however the only defining characteristic is that they are real and that makes it ever so exciting to me, knowing that dreams are reality and that we are free to find such magical places if we simply dare to look!
FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY BY ARTIST MARLON HOLDEN TITLED: “LIGHTING THE WAY”