Roberta Murray
Sunset Beach, September 2010
pigment print
16 x 24"
Roberta Murray approaches photography much the same as the Pictorialist
photographers of the late 1800's early 1900's, to tell a more personal,
interpretative story. Art, in one form or another has always played a big
part in Roberta's life. After studying photography in the late 1980's,
Roberta abandoned the medium to pursue the fibre arts while living and
working on farm raising sheep and goats. It was her work in the fibre arts
that lead her to develop her unique style of photography by adopting the
same principals of colour, texture and depth used in textiles.
I am a picture maker. I think I've always been one. I am also a dreamer.
From as far back as I can remember I've occupied my time with making
pictures as an escape from a sometimes harsh world. Pictures that often
represented a bygone era or way of life far removed from reality. It is with
a combination of traditional techniques, historical ideas and contemporary
tools that I approach photography, using the camera more as a paintbrush
than a mechanical device to create evocative images reminiscent of those
created by the Pictorialist photographers. In my images, I am manipulating
the truth as an escape from reality to express my dreams and personal
visions of the world. It isn't based so much on what exists, as it is on
what I wish existed - a constructed representation.
