Wallace Koopmans Artlog

This is my homage to Kodachrome, which has been discontinued after 74 years.  My dad made thousands of beautiful slides with his Pentax H2 and a hand held light meter.  Kodachrome was his film of choice and today 50 years later these images still retain wonderful accurate colours.  Slides have an undeserved reputation perhaps developed from forced viewings of poorly made images.  On the other hand I have very fond memories of sitting as a family watching our lives displayed in giant images while the projectors fan hummed away broken by the distinctive sound of the next slide and the outburst of us children clamoring to be the first to identify the time and place.  I too made thousands of Kodachrome slides throughout my teens and twenties only reducing my usage when processing was no longer included in Canada.  Now we view our digital pictures and scanned slides on an HD TV and get that same social family interaction.  I do miss the hum of the projector though.

The painting is of a roll of K-11 process film with an ASA of 12.  The box is stamped process before DEC 1959 X and the cloth bag was provided for mailing back to Kodak for processing.  It sits in a deserved place of honour with my camera collection.

While taking pictures yesterday I came across a beautiful organic hazelnut grove.  I spoke to the owners who’s family had planted the trees in 1977 and they kindly allowed me to wander through the grove.   The shadows cast be the trees created interesting patterns and it was only later that I realized I should have spent more time emphasizing them.  Amongst the photo’s, I have  several that have the potential to be made into a relief print however I think that I would prefer to add figures in the grove.

I’m not sure that I ever consider a painting complete, but I have decided to stop working on the Dancer painting.  It has been difficult to find the time to paint lately and these long interruptions have meant that I have to remix colours to match what is already there.  You can see evidence of my painting  method in the detail shots, there is a small amount of glazing but I primarily paint directly.