Courtney Perakis
What initially captured your imagination about the medium you use? Art has always been a part of my life in one form or another, there isn’t a day that passes where art isn’t somehow incorporated. My first DSLR camera was a gift from my parents for my wedding many years ago. I was so excited to use it that I stayed up the whole flight enroute to our honeymoon reading the users manual. By the time we got back from our honeymoon, I was hooked. I loved that I could bring back a wonderful part of out trip and have it continue to live on. I found that I could show others though photography how I saw the world.
What types of things inspire you to create art? It might sound cliché, but everything around me is an inspiration. I love to find beauty in things that most people would normally just walk right by and attempt to give it a new lens for which people to see it through. Something that helps people see the beauty where they may not otherwise.
What life experiences have helped to shape you as an artist? Learning was never an easy process for me, as a very small child I was diagnosed dyslexic and always found it more difficult in the beginning to learn. That was never the case with art. This avenue quickly became a breath of fresh air that allowed me to express myself in a way I wasn’t always capable of doing. Art was the one thing that alway felt like a comfortable warm blanket around me. I think it allowed me to realize there were different ways of looking at things and it helped open my world.
Tell us about your creative process, from the beginning of a typical piece to its completion. In the beginning, it’s very simple, I carry my camera every minute of every day with me on a trip. I find that you never know what might become inspirational so it’s always at my hand. Once I capture the images, I will take them through Lightroom and occasionally, Photoshop, for minor tweaks and changes; I always try to keep the original beauty of the photo intact. From there, depending on the photo, I make the decision as to how it will be displayed whether that’s through a coffee table book, a print, a large scale wood, and acrylic or glass piece. I find it’s important to always go back through your photos even sometimes years later because you never know what might inspire you today. Some of my favorite pieces were pieces I only discovered after time had passed.
What plans do you have for the future direction of your art? At this moment, my plan is to continue finding beautiful places to photograph and finding unique ways of printing and displaying these photos. I have plans for a Hawaii trip later this year and I’m already excited about the idea of printing on fibrous papers and possibly wood.