Portrait of Dottie Campbell
< Back to Directory

Dottie Campbell

About the Artist

Career Summary I have been fascinated by the emotive power of art all my life and have produced artwork in media ranging from photography to anodized metals. All of my work has had a basis in the photographic arts. I was a painting major at Goucher College, studying with Hilton Brown, and at the Maryland Institute College of Art, I studied photography with Richard Jaquish. In my early studio practice, I referenced photographs to create mixed media drawings that toured several Japanese museums. Then I began to experiment with various fiber supports for photographic imagery. In the fine crafts marketplace, my line of fiber crafts embellished with photographic imagery was selected for the American Craft Council shows in Baltimore, San Francisco, and Newport, R.I. I completed the Business Skills Training Course offered by the Women Entrepreneurs of Baltimore in order to learn business and marketing skills. Fascinated by the colors of anodized metal and inspired by my sister’s jewelry designs, I began to design and create jewelry. My jewelry relied on abstract photographic compositions for color relationships and compositional forms. I exhibited in Lyndhurst, New York, Virginia Beach, and Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, and many other fine art craft shows. I returned to the art of photography again, and after using photography in an abstract way for jewelry design, I was full of fresh ideas. I began capturing images that were an amalgam of the various art forms I had explored. Today I approach photography as a multi-media artist. I use the photographic medium to discover the visual essence of the things we see around us.   Short Resumé - Last year, Ann Burton selected a series of my large-scale photographs, captured with my camera-movement technique, for a solo exhibition at BlackRock Center for the Arts in Germantown, Maryland. The images, enlivened with my camera movement, are a visual response to the accelerating pace of modern life. - My photographs have won National Geographic Photography Contests and prizes in Art Ascent, Art and Literary journals.  - I have been invited to participate in a year-long Critics Residency Program at Maryland Art Place, directed by New York art critic, Vincent Katz.  - My photographs have been selected for International Juried Exhibitions, most recently in Harrisburg, Pa., Annapolis, MD, and Bedminster, N.J.  - I have been invited to create a portfolio on the contemporary photography on-line site, Lens Culture. - In the public art realm, my images were shown on LED Baltimore’s ninety-foot digital billboard on Charles Street in Baltimore and one of my photographs was selected for the City Panorama Photo-Mural Project in Seattle, Washington. - My photographic prints are in the permanent collections of Hilton Worldwide, PNC Bank, and Amazon.com Inc., as well as other corporate and private collections.

Dottie Campbell website View Website

Artist's Statement

My photographic work breaks the rules of what people expect photographs to be. Pushing the limits of the camera in the landscape spaces where I compose my images, I capture color interactions, texture, the bare artistic elements of form and line, and the ephemeral qualities of light. My work is grouped into series that explore various ways to abstract reality by photographic means. I have used light, motion, context, reflection, transparency, and focus as agents of abstraction. I continue to explore different ways of working with the photographic medium in order to discover the essence of what we see in the world around us. The large size of my printed work, up to four feet by five feet, is not what is expected in photographic work. These are photographs of a different kind: abstracted realities based on artistic elements, informed by quality of light and hues of nature, and printed large enough to transform gallery spaces with their compositions. The interaction of my camera, the world, and me is important. I have spent too much time in the past shut-up in my studio creating artwork in various media. I want to be out in the world discovering new things and seeing new sights in places where I normally would not go, like fish hatcheries, junkyards, and military installations. Wandering the world with my camera is artistically inspiring. After the interaction with the world, I come back to my studio with my discoveries, refreshed and inspired to process and print my found photographic compositions. - Dottie Campbell

Featured Work

Photos

From my Amped-Up portfolio, this large-scale photograph is a response to the accelerated pace of modern life, my life. By moving my camera at time of image capture, I am no longer a passive recorder of found compositions. My movement capture enables me to enliven and abstract my photographs and allows me to incorporate my own physical response into the photograph. When I photograph, I become a performance artist, a choreographer, a painter, and a creator in the photographic realm. In this photograph, Flaxen Flare, camera movement fuses all the colors and textures of the real world and creates an abstract composition.
From my Amped-Up portfolio, this large-scale photograph is a response to the accelerated pace of modern life, my life. By moving my camera at time of image capture, I am no longer a passive recorder of found compositions. My movement capture enables me to enliven and abstract my photographs and allows me to incorporate my own physical response into the photograph. When I photograph, I become a performance artist, a choreographer, a painter, and a creator in the photographic realm. This photograph, Fragments and Divisions, melds the energies of botanical and zoological life forms.
From my Amped-Up portfolio, this large-scale photograph is a response to the accelerated pace of modern life, my life. By moving my camera at time of image capture, I am no longer a passive recorder of found compositions. My movement capture enables me to enliven and abstract my photographs and allows me to incorporate my own physical response into the photograph. When I photograph, I become a performance artist, a choreographer, a painter, and a creator in the photographic realm. This photograph, Perforated Light, is about the interaction of sunlight and my camera movement.
From my Amped-Up portfolio, this large-scale photograph is a response to the accelerated pace of modern life, my life. By moving my camera at time of image capture, I am no longer a passive recorder of found compositions. My movement capture enables me to enliven and abstract my photographs and allows me to incorporate my own physical response into the photograph. When I photograph, I become a performance artist, a choreographer, a painter, and a creator in the photographic realm. This photograph, Fortunes, is about the energy and interplay of brilliant sunlight and deep shadow.
From my Amped-Up portfolio, this large-scale photograph is a response to the accelerated pace of modern life, my life. By moving my camera at time of image capture, I am no longer a passive recorder of found compositions. My movement capture enables me to enliven and abstract my photographs and allows me to incorporate my own physical response into the photograph. When I photograph, I become a performance artist, a choreographer, a painter, and a creator in the photographic realm. This photograph, Interwoven Iron, is about the linear energy of fencing and the tension between seeing through and being blocked from seeing.
From my Amped-Up portfolio, this large-scale photograph is a response to the accelerated pace of modern life, my life. By moving my camera at time of image capture, I am no longer a passive recorder of found compositions. My movement capture enables me to enliven and abstract my photographs and allows me to incorporate my own physical response into the photograph. When I photograph, I become a performance artist, a choreographer, a painter, and a creator in the photographic realm. This photograph, Strumming, captures the energy I felt when visiting a salt-water marsh alive with a cacophony of birdsong and humming insects.