Conversations with Coner - the evolution of an artist

“As I’ve become older and my vision has physically changed, so has my artwork. The backgrounds are blurrier and the subject becomes more of the focus”

So you’re less HD-like now and your artwork becomes more intimate, it’s almost like the viewer is a fly on the wall or in the room with you and steps behind the lens as you’re shooting. They have a photographers-eye-view.

“Yes, it’s almost like my world has become more smaller, more engaging, I realized this one day when I was talking a walk through the store and someone was walking towards me and I couldn’t tell what they looked like, I could tell they were slender, and female, but everything else was out of my grasp because I couldn’t physically see them. Then I understood it better when I was taking a walk through the everglades, I was shooting with my camera and everything but what I was looking at was out of focus, more softer. That’s when I realized it was my vision, as I become older, the world around me, everything except for what was around me, was less.”

It’s almost as if you are becoming more in tune with your immediate surroundings, and through your art you’re inviting viewers into a more private space. Do you feel more creative because of it? Are you less aware of distractions, and more focused?

“My other senses feel more heightened, my hearing is more in tune, my sense of smell, touch, and I feel like I can impart that on the viewer more, like its more of a space that is developed and tangible with depth, rather than just a 2 dimensional static image. I actually feel the scene, and I want to try and bring that out in my art.”

You’re not just seeing the world with a heightened sense of awareness, you’re also creating, shaping and molding it differently than in your earlier days. You’ve shifted from the macro lens into a micro lens. Do you feel your artwork has reached deeper depths with this evolutionary process? Are you exploring more taboo subjects, transitioning further out into the fringes of sexuality, beyond societal-imposed boundaries of human desires and thought?

“Exactly, it’s almost like my outer world is reflecting and influencing my inner world, my mind is becoming more focused, my ideas are sort of merging with all the ideas and shoots I’ve done before.”

So I’d say your style now is an amalgamation of everything Coner was before, with a new flair thrown in. It’s as if you’ve broken beyond any restrictions into a new realm of freedom in your artistic process. You’re now doing a lot of exploratory work with airbrushing, screen printing, video journaling… it sounds like this transition has been a massive step for you in your journey as an artist.

“Yes, when my mind needs a break from the shooting and editing, I go and do airbrushing. It’s actually been really interesting. When I go on YouTube and watch videos of people airbrushing, they break all boundaries of what one might think. For example, I’ll see some guy with tattoos and piercings in street clothes and he starts creating an amazing piece of WWII vintage art, and then I’ll see someone who might be a WWII vet and he’s creating unicorns, it’s wild, I love how art allows one to shatter societal expectations".”

In a way that’s what you’re doing with your art, you’re creating an outlet for people to see the world differently, they can step behind your lens and put themselves into a dungeon, or a scene they may have imagined, but not been able to materialize in the physical sense.

~ Coner, August 2020