Evan Sheldon
Member Spotlight - December 2017
- Where did you grow up, and where do you live now?
I was born in Lewisville, Texas, in 1992 and raised next door in Flower Mound, Texas. I later moved to Denton, in 2010, to study graphic design and photography at the University of North Texas. I received my BFA in Studio Art - Photography from UNT in May 2017. I then relocated back to Flower Mound to live and work in a studio in Dallas to continue my practice.
- Why did you join TPS, and how long have you been involved?
I joined this past year, and I have yet to really involve myself with the activities that TPS organizes. - Why did you become a photographer, and where do you find inspiration or motivation for your work?
My original interest in visual art came from my interest in advertising and graphic design. I set out to become a graphic designer when I first went to college, but I came to enjoy the freedom that a studio art practice affords me. Since I had begun a degree in graphic design, I learned to incorporate design principles into my studio art.
- How would you describe your photography and/or working process?
Most of my work speaks about the relationship between photography and painting throughout history. Since the inception of photographic representation, photographers and amateur scientists followed the visual lead of painters to elevate the medium to the status of high art. Subsequently, painters saw the merit of photorealistic representation and adjusted their work accordingly. It is this "leapfrogging" progressive relationship that I am most interested in.
- Please tell us about your most recent photographic work.
My most recent work combines modern and surrealist painting techniques with a painterly alternative photographic printing process. I use spray paint or enamel as the resist for chemigrams, which utilize gelatin silver paper and chemistry without the use of negatives or a darkroom. The results are non-objective documents of a painterly performance with photographic materials.
