Ian Kemp

I like to make bodies of work around a central theme or idea. The inspiration for this usually comes from personal experiences, or places that I have travelled to or a creative urge to express an idea visually. Sometimes in my work you will see nature be used as a metaphor. Flowers to indicate that our lives are short and we should live our lives to the fullest: or there are ancient landscapes that impress upon me how insignificant an individual life is in the grand scheme of things.

Sometimes these ideas incubate, they lie dormant until I pick them up later and make the images with a fresh insight that I didn’t have when I first took the photographs.

My work will sometimes be made into a photogravure print. This allows me to preserve a traditional way of printing my art; it is a much more hands on method of showing my work and the level of detail and the tonal qualities are amazing.