Updated: October 1, 2026
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Sean Walmsley
Abstract Photography .
meeting house exhibit
(October-November, 2026)
This is the opposite of a straight photo, taken at roughly the same time as ‘Turbulence’ in a very old thatched cottage in the UK. I gave this one the title of ‘Fool’s Errand’ mostly because it’s better than ‘Untitled’ but also because I want the viewer to interpret it in their own way. It’s one reason why almost all the images in this exhibit don’t reveal the meaning that I had for the work. If you like this small image, I’m curious why—is it because it reminds you of something, or you like the composition or the palette? Or does it do nothing for you, then give it a pass…
This is a companion piece to the two trees in the UK, taken near Schuylerville, NY. The first thing I did to it was to remove some farm buildings over to the right of the tree, but then I combined it with a heavily processed version of the rock face by the Sturbridge Exit on the Mass Pike. This distorted both the foreground as well as the sky (with different effects on both). My goal wasn’t to turn the image into a painting, but rather to give the photograph a blustery, stormy feeling. I’ve also used water reflections for skies which work quite well, too.
The Isabella in the title refers to Isabella Gardner. This is a multiple exposure of one of the windows in the Museum in Boston. Four in-camera images, merged inside the camera and then post-processed in Lightroom and Photoshop. It’s a good example of my technique for creating abstract images that aren’t completely disconnected from real life, yet I hope convey a vivid expression of the architecture of the building. It’s one of my favorite prints and it hangs on the wall in my study at Lathrop.
This is a straight photo of some leaves in a container outside the gym I used to belong to in Saratoga Springs, NY. It only needed cropping. What I liked about it was that the leaves looked like lettering of some kind. Plus the leaf extending past the container’s edge gives it a three-dimensional effect. I capture little things like this mostly because they tickle my sense of humor and curiosity.
Two trees photographed near Quainton, Buckinghamshire. All I did to this photo was process it in Photoshop and Lightroom to bring out the colors in the sky.
This is a collage made up of a wall in a pub in Galway, Ireland; a mosaic pattern of burned wood in Cambridge NY, and a leaf. Combining images from all over the place is a favorite way of creating an abstract image.
This is a collage made up of part of a column in Mass MoCA, an iron girder in a wall (laid out horizontally), and distorting a tiny part of an exhibit, to form a flame.
(I have been photographing walls and columns at Mass MoCA for years, and it’s been a rich source of my abstract work)