The Brooklyn-born, Chareston-based artist H. Scott Cushing finds images in the sky. Though trained as a photographer, snapping a shot is only the first step in his unique, multidisciplinary process, which also incorporates graphic arts and digital manipulation. He starts by taking spectacular photographs of clouds, either at sunset, on crisp, clear blue days or under menacing, overcast skies. He then applies various mirroring effects that turn those stunning cloudscapes into Rorschach-like abstract patterns within which Cushing sometimes embeds digital, drawing-like human figures. These additional features disrupt the patterns of repetition, injecting surreal and surprising elements into the creation. He cites the importance of existentialism in his work, which comes across with superb visual force both in the fragile outlines of those human figures, but also in the quasi-Biblical immensity of the skies he shoots and refracts.

H. Scott Cushing’s combinations of celestial and human images elicit innumerable emotional impressions, from melancholy and self-reflection to rapturous optimism.