July 2011: Stan McCartin: Private View

Picture Perfect!

Our current Suite exhibitor, local photographer Stan McCartin, hosted a private viewing last night (Thursday 14 July) for his colleagues, friends and family.

Over 40 of his guests enjoyed a breadth of Stan's work, which spans a variety of subject matter, style and techniques over a period of time, from film days to the present digital.

Visitors travelled from neighbouring villages, some from London and as far afield as Milton Keynes. Members from his local camera club were inspired by the medium exhibited in a corporate environment.

Stan is a friendly and charismatic Glaswegian who has been an active photographer since school days, interrupted only for a while by marriage, career and mortgage, but now in reitrement he is busy in many areas of this fascinating visual art form. He learned fromo his Dad's pal who "did" weddings, and a teacher at school who ran a small extra-curricular photo club in the physics lab.

Curator of previous Suite exhibitions, Wayne Warren, was very pleased to see his friend receive praise from his peers. Wayne was instrumental in steering Stan towards a more expressive technique, having previously focussed on geometrical black and white photography in the early days.

Wayne suggested Stan try some pure nature which subsequently led to some of his work appearing in a mixed media exhibition at Edinburgh in 2003 with Wayne, Make Cull, and work from Tracey Emin and Chris Ofili. Another exhibition, solely about trees, called the Leaf Show followed with Wayne in 2004 at the Surface Gallery in Nottingham.

More adventurous and abstract techniques soon followed, and there have been several exhibitions since. He also continues to compete in the photography club arena and is a member of Harrow, amongst other camera clubs.

Now living in Wendover, Stan does his own thing with some small gourps of photographers on self inspired assignments, as well as judging and lecturing on the subject. Needless to say he is never without at least a pocket digital which captured some of the images in this exhibition.

As they say, the best camera is the one you have with you at the time.