As we all know, Chairman Mike loves to stimulate our photographic imagination and creativity with a Chairman’s Challenge. The latest one took place on Wednesday 14 April on the now-familiar Zoom Conferencing. When we did the 'Art and Artists' challenge last year, everyone enjoyed it so much that there were many calls to do the challenge again at some future meeting. And now we have!

This Chairman’s Challenge was, therefore ‘Art and Artists Part 2’ as we were again asked to recreate the style of an artist or art movement photographically.  And this also followed on naturally from Jane Lazenby’s excellent ‘Inspired by Art’ presentation in March when Jane explained how some of the great painters provided inspiration for her fine art photographs.

As explained in the Programme:

“This challenge is to pick any artist: Hockney, Lautrec, Rothko, da Vinci, Renoir, et al. or art movement eg. Impressionism, Surrealism, Abstract, Cubism, Pop Art, Minimalism or any other one and to recreate their style photographically.

There are many artists and styles that lend themselves to photography both in-camera and with photoshop; for example Monet and ICM, Jackson Pollock and dots and splashes, Van Gogh and stylised sunflowers.

There are literally hundreds to come up with, so get googling, pick a style or three and see what you can come up with.”

Members responded enthusiastically with images representing artists as diverse as Caravaggio, Warhol, Van Gogh, Dali, Rembrandt, Monet, Botticelli, Gaugin, Turner, Cezanne, Georgia O’Keefe, Theo van Doesburg, David Shepherd, Frank Bowling, and more.  And art movements depicted included baroque, impressionism, post-impressionism, surrealism, cubism, abstract, pop art, psychedelia, and De Stijl.

Subjects included people, birds, flowers, animals, landscapes, and even Lego bricks.

After a quick knockout contest to determine the favourite image – this was found to be Jon Cruise’s wonderful representation of Caravaggio – all the authors were invited to explain their inspiration and their creative processes.

Once again this was an intriguing challenge, encouraging artistic creativity as well as technical experimentation with both camera technique and post-processing.

Best of all – there were some great images to enjoy!