Dan Gottlieb‘s  newest series of images – actually a combination of photography, painting and cabinet-making – are rich, lush, pigment-loaded abstractions.

He uses a digital camera to capture figures, landscapes and architecture, but that’s just the beginning.

“It’s the starting point of building theses objects in my studio and workshop,” he says. “I’ve always liked working with the handmade, so now I’m printing on acrylic sheets and applying paints for a velvety finish.”

His earlier work was framed in shadow boxes that the artist made himself. These, however, are frame-free. Each work is a single, thin piece, and one object unto itself.

“There’s no container,” he says. “They are all of one individual sheet, with a back support structure so they can float off the wall.”

The result is an emphasis on the abstraction itself, achieved with digital exposures taken while the artist moved his camera. He left the lens open anywhere from three to 22 seconds, depending on the light in the atmosphere.

“I’d have to adjust my movement, in kind of a dance,” he says.

In Seattle on business last year, he left his watch on Eastern Time, rising at 4:00 AM to go out and shoot in the pre-dawn hours. Of particular interest was a construction site near the Alaska Highway, where columns holding freeway overpasses caught his eye.

“For a full week I’d set out, with conditions so perfect because the lack of light allowed me to keep the shutter open a long time.” he says. “The colors shift, and become rich in a seductive kind of way. And the object and the context blend together in an interesting way.”

Brighter, crisper and more colorful than his last exhibition, this one can be seen at the Horace Williams House in Chapel Hill, N.C. beginning April 6

For more information, go to http://www.dangottliebphoto.com/.

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