Ian Warren

Nanaimo based photographer Ian Warren has been exploring all things “Photographic” since the 1970’s starting out with a small Brownie camera and access to his childhood home’s basement darkroom. Beyond this early exposure to conventional photography Ian has explored a wide range of analog and digital mediums including photocopy art, decoupage, mixed media and linocuts. Spending 12 years as a Letterpress printer has also contributed to his understanding of colour, space and texture. As a member of a variety of photographic clubs and groups in Canada and London England he has participated in numerous shows and Photographic Salons Ian has also attended classes and workshops all over the world.

I try to create” photographics” that make the ordinary seem extraordinary. Often they are what I calls “Visual fragments” other times the images are common subjects captured with a different style or technique and sometimes the work is presented as an homage to a past artist, Amongst the many styles that I like to explore are the abstracts that emerge from getting close to the subjects and challenges the viewer to see the beauty in the everyday. I also like to combine analog and digital techniques and sometimes I simply produce a “straight out of the camera” photograph .

I was mentored early on by my painter mother and my photographer father who introduced me to the works of Max Dupain, Ernst Hass, the photographers of Magnum and a wide range of painters, sculptors and visual artists. I count artists such as Chagall for his colours, Toulouse Lautrec for his cropping and Rauschenberg for his mixed media pieces as significant influences on my style, execution and approach.