John Duckworth Broad Creek

John Duckworth’s works transcend the line between realism and abstraction. His photographs are infused with an intimate knowledge of nature, a passion for pure color, and a rhythm drawn from life itself. His trademark style involves abstracting the photographic image to lend the work a much lauded painterly appearance. By providing the viewer a sense of place, yet obscuring the details, he allows each individual to step into the image and bring forth their own visual history. The ensuing narrative is enriched through the power of memory, infusing a personal creative process with universal appeal.

Duckworth's art imparts a calming, meditative and contemplative quality intended to elicit a deeper consideration of ourselves and our environment. He is most well known for his quietly abstract landscape photography of the Southeast coast, wherein the images are read as luminous, rhythmic Color-Field paintings. More recently his work has become immersive multimedia experiences involving video, music, performance, painting, and photography.

In 2014, his long-standing meditation practice inspired a new body of work culminating in an exhibition entitled "AWAKE" — an immersive multimedia experience guiding each visitor through eight sequential rooms and over 90 original works of art, while wearing wireless headsets playing ambient audio composed for each room. This work is multi-layered and diverse, including photography, painting, screen-printing, airbrush, spray paint, audio, video, design and performance. “I wanted the exhibition to be alive — as I sat in meditation two to five hours a day for two months I was changing, transforming myself as part of the process,” the artist has said. He lives and works in Johns Island, South Carolina, and New York City.

Find original John Duckworth photography and other art on 1stDibs.

(Biography provided by Romanoff Elements)

Beginning in the early 20th century, abstract art became a leading style of modernism. Rather than portray the world in a way that represented reality, as had been the dominating style of Western art in the previous centuries, abstract paintings, prints and sculptures are marked by a shift to geometric forms, gestural shapes and experimentation with color to express ideas, subject matter and scenes.

Although abstract art flourished in the early 1900s, propelled by movements like Fauvism and Cubism, it was rooted in the 19th century. In the 1840s, J.M.W. Turner emphasized light and motion for atmospheric paintings in which concrete details were blurred, and Paul Cézanne challenged traditional expectations of perspective in the 1890s.

Some of the earliest abstract artists — Wassily Kandinsky and Hilma af Klint — expanded on these breakthroughs while using vivid colors and forms to channel spiritual concepts. Painter Piet Mondrian, a Dutch pioneer of the art movement, explored geometric abstraction partly owing to his belief in Theosophy, which is grounded in a search for higher spiritual truths and embraces philosophers of the Renaissance period and medieval mystics. Black Square, a daringly simple 1913 work by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, was a watershed statement on creating art that was free “from the dead weight of the real world,” as he later wrote.

Surrealism in the 1920s, led by artists such as Salvador Dalí, Meret Oppenheim and others, saw painters creating abstract pieces in order to connect to the subconscious. When Abstract Expressionism emerged in New York during the mid-20th century, it similarly centered on the process of creation, in which Helen Frankenthaler’s expressive “soak-stain” technique, Jackson Pollock’s drips of paint, and Mark Rothko’s planes of color were a radical new type of abstraction.

Conceptual art, Pop art, Hard-Edge painting and many other movements offered fresh approaches to abstraction that continued into the 21st century, with major contemporary artists now exploring it, including Anish Kapoor, Mark Bradford, El Anatsui and Julie Mehretu.

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Color photography evokes emotion that can bring a viewer into the scene. It can transport one to faraway places or back into the past.

The first color photograph, taken in 1861, was more of an exercise in science than art. Photographer Thomas Sutton and physicist James Clerk Maxwell used three separate exposures of a tartan ribbon — filtered through red, green and blue — and composited them into a single image, resulting in the first multicolor representation of an object.

Before this innovation, photographs were often tinted by hand. By the 1890s, color photography processes were introduced based on that 1860s experiment. In the early 20th century, autochromes brought color photography to a commercial audience.

Now color photography is widely available, with these historic photographs documenting moments and scenes that are still vivid generations later. Photographers in the 20th and 21st centuries have offered new perspectives in the evolving field of modern color photography with gripping portraiture, snow-capped landscapes, stunning architecture and lots more.

In the voluminous collection of photography on 1stDibs, find vibrant full-color images by Slim Aarons, Helen Levitt, Gordon Parks, Stefanie Schneider, Steve McCurry and other artists. Bring visual interest to any corner of your home with color photography — introduce a salon-style gallery hang or another arrangement that best fits your space.