‘Kene Sperry’s artwork re-creates the ineffable sense of discovery we felt as children exploring our parks, playgrounds, or backyards. Through his black-and-white images, recognizable scenes take on new meaning. A forest resembles microbes under a microscope. A buffalo’s textured fur could be a distant hill. A river system becomes veins beneath the skin. His photography documents the natural world, but it’s not always immediately clear what is in each image. First, you’ll see the rich textures in each piece, the sweeps of light and dark. Then forms emerge—an elk’s shadow, a mountain ridge, a line of tracks in the snow. The images capture parts of a whole, as if the focus is somewhere else. This is because his subject has never changed. His work is an invitation to surrender, to let go of the walls that separate us from one another, from the natural world and from ourselves. The subject will always be, as another writer has observed, “The viewer, looking inward.”’
- James Farrell, 2022
