ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Robert Buelteman is a celebrated fine art photographer whose works connect audience to subject in an emotionally transcendent manner, in the tradition of eastern wisdom and western revelation. Whether examining the spirit of the landscape or inquiring into the design of nature, his work is a powerful extraction of beauty and substance revealing unrecognized dimensions in the commonplace.

In 1999, Buelteman left photographic tradition behind in creating Through the Green Fuse, a portfolio of energetic photograms made without cameras, lenses, or computers. Working directly with large sheets of photographic film, living plants are used as a filter through which high-voltage electricity and fiber-optically-delivered light is passed. The resulting images open a window on life’s mysteries, and were compared by the Los Angeles Times with photographs of our universe made by the Hubble Telescope.

Buelteman writes, “The actual process of imaging begins with the introduction of high frequency, high voltage electricity into the exposure matrix to create and illuminate the blue aura that emanates from the subject. Then, I use one of a variety of light sources including xenon-strobe, tungsten, and fiber-optic light to illuminate the subject by hand so the light is scattered through the diffusion screens, through the subject, and onto the film where the exposure is recorded. In essence, I regard these as paintings made with the energy of visible light and electricity, using the living plant as both source and filter.”

ABOUT

Robert Buelteman has received accolades from institutions as diverse as the United States Congress, Commonwealth Club of California, Committee for Green Foothills, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Since 2010 his art has been the subject of dozens of essays in twenty-six languages on six continents around the globe, and can be found in public and private collections worldwide, including the Yale University Art Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Accel-KKR, Bank of America, Abingworth, Adobe Systems, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Stanford University, Xerox, and Nikon.