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POUL BECKMANN
Born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1949.
I emigrated along with my family to Canada, first, to Nova Scotia, and then
to St Catherine's, Ontario. My family ultimately settled in California. My
father loved to travel, to explore new places. This is something that seems
to be inherent in the Danish character. Studied commercial and fine art
graphics at SYVUHS, LATT, Santa Monica College and UCLA. My interest in
graphic design and mechanical design; especially in designs derived from the
patterns and structures in nature. The characteristics of beetles, their
almost machine-like structure combined with infinite varieties of surface
patterning were instantly appealing to me. One of my primary influences was
botanical and zoological illustrations of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, and on through the Victorian era. Drawn to represent species with
as much accuracy as possible, they were also beautiful works of art.
Likewise, I use macro photography to reveal an exotic hidden world, not
readily observable because of size.
ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE; A major factor in our perception of the world is our
own size; our point of view dictated by our own human scale. On an
instinctive level we evaluate our fellow creatures based on comparisons of
our relative sizes. A familiar object pulled out of context and presented at
a much altered scale acquires new and different meaning and character and
presence; its very identity must be rediscovered. A new response is evoked
from the viewer. Might it be that creatures such as the elephant and the
whale are deemed "majestic" primarily because they are so much larger than
human scale? Surely much of our fascination for the fossilized remains of
those long gone dinosaurs is due to their massive size. But what of the
unfamiliar, the barely noticeable? The tiny insect goes unnoticed, small
enough to hide on a leaf, or camouflaged by intricate patterning, hiding in
plain sight on the bark of a tree. When we do notice an insect, our typical
reaction is not to try for a closer look, but to recoil. Our antiseptic
culture has distanced itself from nature, and most especially from insects.
We harbor an instinctive dread of them.If we stage and present them
magnified to heroic scale perhaps we can discard our preconceived notions
and view them with a new sense of wonder |
