Brian Hallas

Like many artists, my primary goal is to entertain myself, but when others appreciate my images — when it becomes collaboration — it takes the experience far beyond my expectations. Since the beginning of the pandemic, I’ve turned my gaze to the vast and diverse flora that inhabits my life to create abstract and hallucinatory blooms of the imagination. By refining each floral portrait through the filter of what a friend has called “abstract imaginative realism”, I look for the mysteries I can’t normally see without wearing a very different set of lenses.

The iPhone is my main tool, to both shoot and manipulate my photographs. By using self-created filters and a variety of apps in combination, I distort the originals. In this way, I dramatize the myriad textures, contours, patterns, hues, and moods inherent in the flora itself. I then use the resultant images as individual layers, combining the variations to create the final piece. The often painterly result gives an intense and enigmatic experience.

After a long and rich life collaborating in film, music, and especially theater (principally as a sound designer in NYC), I turned to photography as my primary means of creativity. My tastes are stimulated by an eclectic spectrum of artists from an array of art forms, eras, and genres whose works never fail to encourage my creativity in this fantastic kaleidoscopic universe. It should also be noted that I’ve always regarded Grandma Moses as a true icon, and now that I’ve passed the age of 70, I feel closer to her than ever.