Artist explores world through ‘silent seeing’
Elizabeth May’s photographs blur the lines that define objects. Viewers have to identify the subjects through their own perception. One might attempt to decipher the images reflected on bodies or puddles of water or let the imagination take over and see something completely different.
May calls it “Silent Seeing,” and “a form of photographic exploration which seeks to synchronize the eye of the photographer with the contemplative mind, allowing for the expression of light as it reveals itself through the reflective world … It seeks to capture light in a fleeting moment as it flows through form into the eye of the observer. It is at that fractional point in time that silent seeing takes place for the photographer. It is hoped that the image evokes such a silent seeing in the viewer.”
Her newest series, “Under the Division Street Bridge,” turns simple and recognizable objects and architecture into shapes, lines and intricate patterns. The colors are soothing, blending what lies above with what lies beneath.
May was born in San Francisco. Her father was Gordon N. Cope, a well-known artist. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and served as a teacher in the Peace Corps in Western Samoa and aboard the sailship Statsraad Lehmkuhl out of Bergen, Norway, traveling to Africa. She married and had two boys, then worked with special-needs children in Spokane and Republic, Wash., where she developed Peace of the Earth, a business born out of artistic appreciation of the 50,000 million-year-old fossil beds in Republic.
Now retired, May focuses on “Silent Seeing” and harvesting produce from the 2 1/2 acres she and her husband live on in Republic. She has shown her work in Spokane, California and Maui, Hawaii.
Through October, May’s “Under the Division Street Bridge” will be on display in conjunction with her son Chris May’s paintings at the Artist’s Tree Gallery, 828 W. Sprague Ave., in downtown Spokane.
Chris May, 29, has been painting for years. “I corresponded with my grandfather frequently from an early age, sending him various paintings, and he shared insights with me that aided me in my art,” he said.
Chris May has a degree in psychology from Gonzaga University, where he took painting and drawing classes. He has taken things slowly compared with the average student. “I was born with temporal lobe epilepsy, which is associated with depression,” he said, “I find that, along with other things such as exercise, painting has served as type of distraction to keep me from fully experiencing the various pitfalls associated with depression. Learning also has played a big part.”
The paintings he will show at the Artist’s Tree are simple and insightful and include still life, landscapes, a puff of black fur that is a dog, and two new abstracts that will be more involved. “I have recently taken painting up more seriously in the past couple of months and have begun focusing on more abstract subjects.”