SadieFaye: Featured Artist of the Week: Christy Lee Rogers

“Metaphorically, water stood for purity;

& a body immersed in it, free from of gravity but trapped by the inability to breathe, was a huge dichotomy that consumed me.

Pain and suffering all mixed up with freedom and purity.”

– Christy Lee Rogers, interview with Astrum People

Christy Lee Rogers is truly a unique and multidimensional artist; Not only is she an extremely talented contemporary photographer, but she is also a filmmaker, musical lyricist for the alternative rock band “Forty Point," and holds a Bachelors of Arts in telecommunications and film. Born in the small beach town of Kaiulua, Hawaii into a family of musicians, self-expression through the arts has always been an integral part of her life. Rogers has had a successful career thus far, participating in group exhibitions since 2005, and featured in solo exhibitions since 2009. You can purchase her works individually or as a book; “Siren” was released in 2008, and “Odyssey” will be released later this year.

Her work is innovative not only in technique, but in its defiance of genre boundaries. She breaks from contemporary photography in her use of water as the technical foundation of her work. Unlike many modern artists, her images do not require post-production manipulation, as all visual effects are created naturally “in-camera” by the innate properties of the water itself; a testament to the great creative imagination of this artist. Through her works, Rogers is able to construct an enthralling fairy tale of colors that hearkens back to some of the great masters of painting: the dynamic movement, rich hues, and dramatic use of chiaroscuro reminiscent of Jacques Louis David, and the luminescent effect of her figures’ skin shining through the water, bringing the unimaginable realism of the paintings by Ingres to life.

Her images offer a symphony of color, emotions, epiphanies, and secrets – each one allowing the figure to become realized in complete clarity, and dissolving the figure and its intention into a swirl of rippling color. Her muses seem to revel in the complete freedom of movement and bodily expression offered by the dark expanse of water into which they are submerged, yet in the same moment there exists a struggle as they revolt against their human necessity for air and the confines of their reality above water. The water acts to completely remove the figure from our reality; its effect combined with the movement of the fabric around each figure acts to further distance the audience from the figure as they simultaneously dance, float, and fly in their brief but beautiful moment of paradise. A moment that desires to be discovered, felt, and understood.

The artwork as experienced by, SadieFaye

To read more from Christy Lee Rogers’ interview with Astrum People (in quotes), please visit: http://astrumpeople.com/christy-lee-rogers-amazing-underwater-water-photography/

You can find a complete gallery of her works as well as information on her upcoming exhibitions and book release at her personal website: http://www.christyrogers.com/