Leaving Maryland for a remote island in the Pacific Ocean is natural, if you?re James and Nancy Craig.
The Havre de Grace couple spent the past year photographing and painting the people and land on a famous 8-by-15-mile spec of soil inhabited by statues called Easter Island.
In July, they returned from their voyage 2,300 miles off Chile with more than 10,000 photographs, six completed acrylic paintings and 12 more paintings in the works.
Fruits of their year abroad are available online as they prepare for an epic winter show at RiverView Gallery in Havre de Grace. Weekly accounts also are available online as James blogged their artistic venture.
Looking at James? photographs, “you understand his passion for the subject and feel the stillness or the rushing water,” said Tamara Stickler, manager of RiverView Gallery. “His photos have a life of their own. Viewers often think we carry Ansel Adams when they see his work.”
James strives to create layered images, where “the more you look at it, the more you find,” he said. “I?ve always loved how hard it is to take a black-and-white negative and pull a good print out of it. Black and white?s tonal values fascinate me.”
Halfway through their island experiment, James dived into the digital waters.
“Digital photography is a whole new world,” he said. “You just can?t do things in film that are possible in digital. You can take chances.”
Easter Island?s rugged beauty appealed to Nancy, a veteran painter.
“Everybody wants to see the statues and that?s great, but I want to show the terrain,” Nancy said. “The extremes are astounding. The skies are just unbelievable. The coast is jagged, dark and burnt. The Pacific is absolutely gorgeous. It?s an intense ultra-marine blue that turns into a beautiful aqua.”
The Craigs left most of their clothes behind on the island to make room in their luggage for stone and wood carvings. The gems will inspire future works, James said.
