The inrush of a roiling sea pours over a pebbly beach and through the doorway, invading an otherwise empty, interior space. Wisps of clouds float serenely across the walls of a room, gray skies floating through the windows. The barnacled hull of a massive ship glides across the water, a microcosm of life existing on its surface.
Jeffery Becton’s photographs combine interior and exterior spaces to create dreamlike images of scenes found in Maine. He is a visual artist whose digital photography transcends reality through a medium called digital montage, which he has been working with since 1990, combining photography, painting and an array of other mediums.
“The View Out His Window (and in his mind’s eye): Photographs by Jeffery Becton” is on exhibit at the Bates College Museum of Art. It opened on Nov. 6 and will be on display until March 26, 2016, during which time Becton hopes his work will engage viewers and elicit responses unique to their life and experiences.
“I want people to engage with the pictures on the wall directly and not give a thought to whether or not they’re seeing any particular thing in it. What they take away is what they’re meant to take away,” Becton said. “It’s what they bring to it.”
Becton’s work also has been the subject of a book called “Jeffery Becton: The Farthest House,” by author Carl Little, who offers a look into his journey as an artist. Published by Tilbury House on Sept. 21, it includes input by Dan Mills, director of the Bates College Museum of Art, art critic Peter Plagens, and art writer and novelist Deborah Weisgal.
Becton, a graduate of Yale School of Art (now known as Yale School of Art and Architecture) with a master’s in graphic design, has built his career from changing times and technologies with which his work has evolved to integrate. This particular form of digital montage began with Photoshop, a tool he uses every day.
When he began using Photoshop in the early 1990s, it was a relatively new technology that came conveniently packaged in a floppy disk, but his draw to artistry came long before that.
His artistic inclination began with his mother, who was an amateur painter and steered him in the direction of drawing.
“It was a favorite rainy day activity when I was a kid,” Becton said. “I think of my mother as the person who cultivated that in me.
“In college I took a couple of art courses, which really resonated with me. I thought, ‘Boy, this is something I’ve been missing,’” Becton said. “I was a history major, and I thought about majoring in art, but I got talked out of it more than once. It was after I graduated that I began to think seriously that this was more than a passing fancy.”
He then entered a graphic design program at a prestigious university with little for a portfolio in hand and before the time of digital cameras and digitizing.
“My career has spanned the transition from film to a time when photography is almost entirely digital,” Becton said. “It left a lot of people spinning in the wind. There was a fair amount of resentment to that period in regards to what was happening. There was a lot of resistance from the artists.”
Embracing the change has led to Becton’s success and his current exhibit, which exists because of a technology he has come to master, but not before gaining experience in other forms.
“Part of our program was to go to the Yale computer center and learn to set type on the mainframe. … I didn’t even know what software meant. I just knew that we had a screen in front of us,” Becton said.
From there he has met Mac, personal computers and laser printers and has recently undergone a transformation to larger work, which can be seen at the exhibit at the Bates College Museum of Art.
“The work is much larger than any other show I’ve done to date. I’m very interested and excited about what the increase in scale does for the work — including the old work,” Becton said.
Becton’s photographs create an illusion of realistic, yet dreamlike spaces. He believes in printing his own work and uses images that are his own, layering, painting and creating until the piece matches his mind’s eye.
He continually tries to find new ways to describe his work, but it starts with a simple image.
“I try to figure out why it is I like this photograph and start to change it in ways that makes me like it more,” Becton said. “I’m trying to create something as emotionally engaging as I can …
I think I’ve been relatively successful in creating carefully constructed ambiguities that allow people to respond. I start the story with a lot of question marks, and they’re able to finish it emotionally for themselves.”
Becton’s process length varies depending on what he’s trying to create. He has worked on some of his pieces for more than a year.
“I do not get an idea and try to make it on the screen in front of me. I really respond to what’s there already until I’m satisfied that something interesting is happening,” Becton said. “Sometimes a picture comes together in a few hours and sometimes I will work on it for a year or more before I feel like it’s substantially finished. … You have to know when to move on, but sometimes it can take a really long time.”
Broadly suggestive titles depend on the viewer to create for themselves, and a focused, sometimes painstaking process leads to Becton’s otherworldly photos, which turn Maine into a misty, multifaceted storybook of sorts.
As Becton says, the pieces get “curiouser and curiouser” the longer you examine them.
“You follow the rabbit down the rabbit hole,” he said.
His work is an experience for viewers, an instinctual process for him and a tribute to the process behind artistic expression.
“Anyone can take a good picture, but in the hands of a person who has the vision and who is going to work on that vision — the tool is their instrument and the vision will come, whether it’s with a paintbrush or a camera,” Becton said.
“All artists want to contribute something, and they want their voice to be heard. … Every human being wants their voice to be heard, and they’re very grateful when they hear they’ve been listened to,” he said.
Becton’s works of digital montage can be viewed 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and until 7 p.m. Wednesdays during the academic year at the Bates College Museum of Art. The Museum will be closed from Nov. 26 until Nov. 30, but Becton’s photography will be on display until March 26.
“Jeffery Becton: The Farthest House” is available at Blue Hill Books and Courthouse Gallery Fine Art in Ellsworth. It is available on Amazon, via Tilbury House’s website and is on order at Sherman’s locations and expected to be in stock by Friday. For more information about the exhibit, visit bates.edu/museum/exhibitions/current/photographs-by-jeffery-becton/.
