Artist Biography

My passion for the living process, for the excitement of the vital spirit of adventure and discovery during photographic excursions, for being hyper-vigilant with ALIVENESS to the often subtle nuances of light, mood, aura and undiscovered compositional possibilities lying in wait during such excursions – whether a mere walk through my neighborhood or on a cross-country journey – has always run so deep, that it veers close to the very threshold of the spiritual.

Before briefly striving to convey what might be called the philosophy that seems to imbue my approach to and feeling for making photographic images, and since it may be helpful to buyers, collectors or museums for assessing whether my existing, and my very ambitious plans for future portfolios, may complement their acquisition tastes, some reference to what I consider the major influences informing my work may have value. While I might cite others, there are four that I would most emphasize. The first two are the great 20th century American photographers: Ansel Adams and Brett Weston. The next two are not individual artists but periods in art history marked by their indelible aesthetic gestalt; the Impressionist and post-Impressionist period epitomized by many of the well known French and European artists of the late 19th and early 20th century; the last (but not least) is the long and ancient Chinese, Japanese and Indian tradition of ink block painting and drawing. Though much more might be said about each, in the interest of brevity . . .

Seeing with spirit means seeing as much with gut and heart as with the eyes; it means being receptive to seeing a transcendent wholeness, a gestalt. When successful in seeing this way, the image resulting from its’ capture can have an arresting quality that seems to simultaneously make it difficult to pull your eyes away from it, while also seeming to draw you in and beyond the constrained two-dimensionality of the merely visual. What is remarkable is that this kind of ‘magic’ literally surrounds us every day, but usually goes unnoticed. The objective of Sacred Hikari is to search, discover and present the usually unnoticed, and to elevate our awareness that we are surrounded by visions of arresting beauty. The following profile adds further perspective to this objective:

Featured Artist Mark Reiners