Water and Earth: Photographic Abstracts of Hidden Worlds

The images below were Robert Walter's contribution to a two-person
show at The Source on Lake from August 23 to Septmber 27, 2008.

The subjects of Robert Walter and Lee Auerbach’s photographic abstractions
are aspects of nature that often remain hidden in plain sight. Both artists look
beyond the ways nature’s beauty is often observed to find worlds waiting to be
discovered in such places as the patterns and textures of ripples on a lake’s
surface, in pebbles underfoot, and in dried leaves beside the trails we walk.

One way the artists immerse themselves more deeply in dialog with the natural
world is by enhancing and, on occasion, transforming their abstract images in
the digital darkroom. When each image is completed it is a paradox that is both
abstract and very real and is a catalyst for each viewer’s own connection with nature.

Water and Earth is the gallery debut of Lee Auerbach’s Mountain Lake Abstracts,
shot in the High Sierras during August 2007. This show also marks the public debut
of the first of Robert Walter’s Warm Ice images. Using watercolors and melting ice,
this work is a further extension of the artist’s interaction with natural patterns and systems.

Robert Walter’s work is shown in galleries and in exhibitions, such as Beyond the Object,
a show that closed in August '08, at the San Diego Natural History Museum in Balboa Park.
He says:

“People often see different things when they look at one of my images. I love this Rorschach
effect because I feel it is a response to deeper patterns running through the natural world.
And if the viewer’s mind’s eye is activated, that means I’ve done my job and brought something
alive from nature to this flat piece of paper hanging on a wall.”