I'm a multi-disciplinary artist based in St. Paul.  My practice includes video art, filmmaking, and photography.  I use photo collage to mix photographic and painterly concerns and to expand traditional notions of photography.  My process is guided by curiosity and I find joy in simple visual experience.

 

 Subject matter includes tree trunks, roots, rocks, and plants.  Natural elements.  Natural light.  Unnatural composition.

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 For this series, I began with photographs of the roots of toppled trees that line the banks of the Mississippi River near my home.   The roots were washed and eroded by years of rising/falling water exposing wonderfully rich textures and colors.  Through a simple process of mirroring and multiplying a single photograph, a new seamless image emerges.

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 Patterns, weaves, otherworldly organic shapes and primordial forms are revealed - as if they have always existed in the inner life of these trees, and are now unveiled.  They possess an ancient quality.  They look like roots, of course, but they have now  blossomed into something mysterious and timeless.​​

                                                                                                                                                                                 James Byrne