Brian Hallas
__abstract imaginative realism
photo by Tobe Roberts ©2023
I’m an abstract digital photographer. In my work, I celebrate the eclectic cosmos of flowers that surrounds me daily to create hallucinatory blooms of intense colors, surreal shapes, and engaging textures. These days, every image I create is made on my iPhone 11 (in reality more a camera and computer combination than a telephone), which I use to endlessly explore the myriad layering and filters available to me. It always starts with the image. Or maybe two images. I layer and blend them in different ways. Then I’ll add another layer or two of texture and blend them all in other different ways with other different filters. These improvisations are altogether simple, the results of which can acquire a painterly aspect that can be quite surprising.
I like to think that those who connect with my work have become my collaborators, embarking together as co-conspirators on this adventure to see the unseen. They are influential to me in rather esoteric ways, as are so many artists from so many of art forms, eras, and genres, who inspire me to make art. At nearly 72 years old, and after a long, rich life collaborating in film, music, and particularly as a sound designer for the theater in NYC, I have turned to photography as my primary means of creativity. At least for me, especially as an outsider, a Late Bloomer, and a modern-day Grandma Moses, shaping and sharing these abstract flowers has become an oasis of peace and creativity in a very troubled world.