Biography
You are probably just a little curious to know who xibbit is. Allow me to introduce myself!
I am a self-taught exhibiting photographer, who has been seeing the world through the lens of a camera for over 40 years. Accredited with the PPOC (Professional Photographers of Canada), and having left behind years in the corporate world, with its soul-sucking grey walls and white noise, I endeavour to create abstract artwork that makes one’s soul sing and brings the beauty of nature into our everyday lives.
Born and raised in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, surrounded by some of the flattest farmland you will ever find, one might wonder where to find photographic inspiration, but it is an area that is rich in its biodiversity.
Nestled between Great Lakes, it is a natural bird migration route. Rondeau Provincial Park is a songbird migration mecca for photographers and birders alike. As is Point Pelee National Park, which is also the southernmost Canadian roost for migrating monarch butterflies. Snow geese, bald eagles, osprey, trumpeter swans, mallards, and even snowy owls pass through these parts.
These are just two of the many Provincial and National Parks that I was privileged to spend time in, as a child. Camping and canoeing were central themes while growing up – having completed road trips to the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico by the age of 11.
Summers filled with camping and exploring! Enjoying early morning campfire smoke rising on a misty lake. Hunting dew-kissed spider webs. Drifting-in to get a closer look at beaver dens. Witnessing the glory of the night sky mirrored in a still lake.
It was during these early years that I learned to really see – to be observant – to notice details, patterns and textures, the play of light through the trees – a red trillium, a jack-in-the-pulpit, a shaggy mane mushroom, a painted turtle, moss on a stump, a tiny orange toadstool, a water spider skating on the surface tension of a lake or a robin’s blue eggshell discarded from a nest.
I learned to hear – to listen – for a splash, a hoot of an owl or the call of a loon, the drips from a paddle, rocks rubbing together under the breaking waves.
I learned to wait – patiently – for a loon to surface near the canoe or for a wolf to howl.
But most importantly, as a result of all of this, I learned to be curious and to explore. And as Albert Einstein is quoted as saying:
“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”
Ever since I can remember, I have enjoyed capturing details that often go overlooked in our busyness – a shadow, a texture, a pattern, a moment – and calling attention to them through photography. I also like to push the boundaries of what I can see with my own eyes, playing with time, colour, light and motion – bending the rules to see something in a new light or something that I cannot see with my own eyes, but that can be seen through the camera!
“Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.”
Without getting too philosophical, I believe that we were each created by The Master Creator and that within each of resides a seed of creativity that is waiting to be nurtured and grown and brought into a season of fruit-bearing.
Fine art is defined by the Oxford dictionary as: a creative art, especially visual art, whose products are to be appreciated primarily or solely for their imaginative, aesthetic, or intellectual content. It is my desire to create images that emote the feelings that I experienced when the image was created.