Contemporary Art by R. Schofield
Digitally Altered Photographs
Welcome
Take your time exploring the artwork.
I hope you enjoy this view into my reality.
About the work
Artist's Statement
Our reality is now so tied to photographs that everyone carries a camera and the photos that document our reality are being regularly shared in a global forum. As an artist, I can easily change that reality into fantasy - the moment in time becomes the timeless moment – through photo-editing software. This digital world, made up of discrete pixels, when enlarged to 52" x 78", becomes intensely pure. The textures, values, colors, and lines peculiar to the digital world, are all formed by tiny squares even smaller than the tesserae of mosaics. I find these characteristics to be infinitely fascinating. Computer software provides a wide variety of possible combinations that can be manipulated to create odd and rich imagery. I have only scratched the surface of the possible so far because "happy accident" is a major characteristic of this exploration which keeps the process always fresh and new. I do not create editions. I destroy all but low-quality files of pieces that are sold to ensure that the images are one-of-a-kind, giving these digitally altered photographs even more characteristics of Fine Art paintings.
Technique
Schofield’s images use a wide range of subjects, all processed through photo-editing software, including hand-work with digital stylus, to emerge with painterly and fantasy qualities that reveal her artist’s vision for color, line, volume, and texture. Beginning with ordinary photos Schofield manipulates these to varying degrees, until each becomes a product of her personal vision. Her photos are drawn from many sources; travel, social functions, her work as a photographer for a local newspaper, her paintings, even photographs of documents. With manipulations applied to an image until it becomes something new, the worlds created in the computer take on a reality of their own, both modern and timeless.
Biography
Schofield earned an MFA in Painting and Photography in 1979 from the University of South Florida. Since then, she has exhibited her work all over the US in solo and group shows, appeared in international magazines, and had a 2-person show in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Her work was included in “The Heroic and Sublime: Large-Scale Work by Contemporary Women Artists” at the Gulf Coast Museum of Art in Largo, FL and in “Peoples Choice” exhibition at the Polk Museum of Art, and was included in a seminal 3-person exhibition “130 Years: Lynn Fostkett / Leslie Neumann / Roberta Schofield” at Gallery 221 at Hillsborough Community College. She has held faculty appointments at the University of South Florida, South Florida Junior College, the University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire, and at St. Petersburg Junior College, and has lectured extensively. Schofield’s digitally altered photographs have won many awards and her biography is in Who’s Who in American Art and Who’s Who in America.