Artist Statement
On a good day, when eye, mind, heart, light, locale, atmosphere and subject are all in sync, I look through the camera, and for a brief moment, time holds its breath and the simple, austere beauty of the world presents itself, neatly framed in my viewfinder. Some images are discoveries, others are constructions. In either event, with the camera, I find myself becoming more open, more in-the-moment, more reflective toward what I see before me. In sharing my work, I hope the images may, in some way, stir similar experiences within you, the viewer, as you stand and respond to the complex world you see.
Process Statement
In my art practice, my primary goal is to uncover the poetry, mystery and the beauty of even the most unassuming subject through mindful seeing. Since my personal aesthetic tends toward the reductive, I make monochromatic images with black-and-white film and vintage 35mm cameras and lenses, and interpret them through digital processing similar to my workflow in the traditional darkroom.
As I create my prints, I am as much in mind of the drawings of Georges Seurat and the traditions of mezzotint printmaking as I am in the process of traditional photographic imaging. And, I appreciate how the traditional artifact of film "grain" serves to create a link to monochromatic works of the past. Stylistically and thematically, my work seems to fall somewhere in the middle ground between the early 20th Century Pictorialists and the 1970’s Minimalists, where the sublime and the quotidian co-exist.
Chris Heard has been an active photographer for over 40 years, having started his career as a staff photographer for his hometown daily newspaper, eventually working as a freelance commercial photographer and as a fine artist. In 1993, he received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute where he studied with notable artists Henry Wessel, Linda Connor and Jack Fulton, among others.
His work has been shown in galleries and museums across the U.S. at venues including:
Blue Sky Gallery Pacific Northwest Drawers Exhibition, Portland OR
Spurgeon Art Gallery, Central Washington University
Gallery One, Ellensburg, WA
Museum of Culture and Environment, Central Washington University, Ellensburg, WA
Jundt Museum of Art, Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA
The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA
Carmel Center For Photographic Art, Carmel, CA
Yosemite National Park Gallery, Yosemite, CA
Huntsville Museum of Art, Huntsville, AL
The Maryland Federation of Art Gallery, Annapolis, MD
Honors and awards include:
2015 and 2016 Summer Art Exhibition Kent Arts Commission Purchase Awards
Museo Fine Print Award at The Print Center 84th Annual International Competition in 2010
2009 Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Visual Arts for Photography.
In 2015, Chris retired from his position as Professor of Photography at Harford Community College in Bel Air, MD and moved to Washington state to continue his art-making practice.
