Spirit walls

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1122 - abstract digital photograph by contemporary First Nations artist Winter Brown

This series of photographs continues the incorporation or treatment of urban surfaces in my work, which began most noticeably with the multimedia Indigenous Metropolis/Immigrant Wilderness series I began creating when first living in NYC in 2006.

The Spirit wall are photos of walls, ground and old subway advertising poster spaces. They are taken in big cities, mostly New York.

As I move through the city, I often see these abstract images that are created over time as layers of paint, dirt, paper and tagging are removed and added to these surfaces, sometimes purposefully, but more often haphazardly, by time, the elements & the human hand.

The actions & activities that collude in this production are not done with the intention of creating an abstract image, something to be appreciated by an audience, but rather they happen synchronistically, a collaboration by largely innocent parties.

I photograph them, and then embellish them further through the photo editing process, which I consider to be a form of painting. They become artworks through a combination of seeing, framing, gathering and processing.

I think of these works as urban 'Spirit paintings'. To me, they speak to the way unseen forces can contrive, intervene and act on our behalf in the most unexpected, subtle or unseen ways to bring us many big and little gifts, moments or experiences of grace or beauty. And in the pervasive inclination of the Universe to create beauty (even in 'hard' places and/or decay.

I also feel these pieces have a (plains) Amerindian aesthetic, though it was unintentional, is subtle and perhaps unexpected in abstract digital photographs.

Due to repeated unsanctioned appropriation of signature elements of my work, in the interest of protecting work in vulnerable stages of development, I now keep my newest pieces on a private page until they, and/or other closely related works, have been seen in public venues and/or by my peers and/or arts professionals in a context where there is a public record of the production and timeline of signature elements and artworks in my practice.

Feel free to contact me for more info about this.

Interested curators, collectors or other arts professionals may also contact me to request access to private work webpage/s at winter@winter-brown.com.

Hiy hiy,
Bebonkwe ᐱᐳᐣ