Biography
Gordon Douglas Ball’s work deals with alienation, loneliness, and artistic independence. Son of two-time National Newspaper Award winner Doug Ball and a 3rd generation photographer, Ball himself worked as a photographer for 15 years before feeling distanced with the medium. After a chance encounter with a de Kooning retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, he realized that photography was behind him in the classical sense.
When asked about his artwork, Ball finds himself explaining his process and inspiration similarly in the way he did with photography. Many of the same ideals are expressed, color, form, rules of thirds, subject and where the eyes enter and exit the frame. But most importantly for him, is the process. He learned photography on a Nikon Fm2 film camera, which was handed down from his grandfather to Ball in 1995. He learned about film, f stops, pushing and pulling exposures, and printing and developing both color and black and white images. It took years of practice and observation to learn how to capture and create beautiful images, and now Ball finds himself exploring the medium of paint and canvas using these same skills. “Photography to me came second nature and taught me so much. It required calculation and preparation, but I wanted to paint and make a mess.”