Listen to Ron’s Interview with Holly Gordon and Ward Hooper
They met through social media—as seniors, not millennials. Holly Gordon, a fine arts and documentary photographer, and Ward Hooper, a watercolor painter, were introduced by a writer and mutual friend, who noticed distinctive similarities in the work of the two artists, who shared a mutual affinity for color and light. When Holly met Ward, the two immediately connected as artists, and soon became close friends, meeting regularly and visiting local places that inspired their individual creativity. And the rest is history—still in the making. In today’s episode, you’ll hear the remarkable stories of Holly and Ward, how their lives serendipitously intertwined, resulting in an unusual collaboration of exhibitions, presentations, projects and a book that combined their two works, “Parallel Perspectives: The Brush/Lens Collaboration.” Holly, a multi-faceted artist and long-time teacher, will describe her innovative use of technology to create photographs that look, at first glance, like paintings made by a brush, a process she calls “photo-liminalism.” She’ll talk about how she has joined a growing contemporary artistic and social movement known as “techspressionism,” an approach in which technology is utilized as a means to express emotional experience. Ward, for his part, will talk about the dramatic resurgence of work through his collaboration with Holly—and his use of technology as a means of teaching and sharing art to new generations. Theirs is a story of resilience; the daily pursuit of creativity as a life-affirming force; and the steadfast advocacy for the arts as a means of engaging and inspiring humanity, no matter what our age. As Holly puts it simply: “Art is a wonder drug.”
In April 2013 this tulip of mine was the cover of 
Early in my photography days I searched for perfect blooms that were surrounded by complementary backgrounds because I want my images to be visually whole. The positive and negative space must fit like a visual glove.
Tulips have been part of my life and focus even before I realized that their colorful and varied displays looked like dabs of paint!
My first morning in Monet’s glorious Giverny garden was cold and rainy and windy. The blooms were bedraggled and not at all as I had dreamed it would be. I wanted to cry and then rethought the situation locating a cluster of red tulips surrounded by yellow and green. I then photographed to capture the movement and the merging of color. I ultimately created this image by layering a series I took that first morning in Monet’s Garden. Little did Iknow that this experimentation would contribute to my current creative process, Photo-Liminalism. 
And it was the tulip that cemented the Facebook connection to Ward Hooper that led to meeting face-to-face and begin a collaboration that has led to our book Parallel Perspective:The Brush/Lens Collaboration
One of the discoveries I made in Monet’s garden, Giverny, was that there is powerful beauty in decay. Up untill now I had searched for perfection to photograph…but now I was expanding the sensitivity of my vision to see beauty in blooms past their prime.
The nighttime temperature must have dipped after a rain and caused these tulips to become semi-translucent opalescence. Whatever it was that happened to them created an unusual appearance that was beautiful and seductively voluptuous. I deliberately photographed this image out-of focus to soften the tonality. I named it Odalisque for its sensual qualities. When my patron first saw it he immediately responded with this passage of Baudelaire’s Triesses de la Lune, Sorrows of the Moon from Les Fleur du Mal Tr. Richard Howard:
And here is Le Danseur. I know I had French on my brain but don’t you think she looks like a dancer with her arms, gracefully outstretched and her skirt flowing…
These two images are my Chiaroscuro tulips—light out of darkness. The background of the lawn was far enough away form the light of the tulips to render a nearly black background
Photographing M’Illumino was a pivotal moment in my creative life. Like Monet I am an avid gardener and painter….only the camera is my paintbrush and the viewfinder my canvas
Monet said to look beyond the bloom and I do a lot of that now. These are some of my creations:
