AARON LELITO: AN ARTIST'S STATEMENT

| AN ARTIST’S STATEMENT

In my photography and digital art, I am primarily drawn to the patterns and imagery of nature. This subject matter has become a way for me to reflect on the larger themes of environment, climate, and ecology. Along with this macro view, however, there is the micro—my personal, subjective relationship with the world around me. There are restorative, therapeutic, and transcendent aspects of interacting with the waves, rocks, leaves, and branches. These patterns have a deep resonance with the transformations that are a part of the human condition.

For the theme of “Lovely, Dark, and Deep: Journeys Real and Imagined,” I was drawn to images that are spacious and layered. Within the darkness of the night sky, however, there is also a luminous quality, and for me there is something disarming and vulnerable about these photographs. A moment of pause to notice a simple image—the moon through branches or the fading glow of twilight sky—can be a moment of connection and presence, a moment of taking a breath and noticing it move in and out. It can be a moment of wonder and awe.

Sometimes we need a wake-up call, a reminder to look up. To see, to feel. “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” This is Mary Oliver’s instruction for “living a life.” Each journey into nature is a little different—some lovely, some dark, some deep.