Ralph Kerle - My Story, my Work
Two or three mornings a week around 6.40am come rain, hail or shine when I am not travelling, I enter the Castle Haven Track in Castlecrag, Sydney, Australia. The track is a steep 450 metre dirt track interspersed with the remnants of Sydney Sandstone steps, framed by local forests of dry Australian eucalyptus trees and a lush green undergrowth. I often disturb Australian sulphur crested cockatoos, native bush turkeys and their tormentors, the local domestic dogs, looking for an early morning meal as I descend onto the foreshore of Castle Haven Inlet, a small sheltered inlet in Sailors Bay, Middle Harbour, Sydney. It is here, secured by chain and rope to foreshore trees, I moor my second-hand sea kayak bought cheaply off eBay in a moment of desperation.
This kayak has become my optics onto a world of perception offering boundless insights I could not have previously dreamt of whilst connecting me as close to nature as the local Aboriginal tribe, the Cammeraygals, must have been who originally inhabited this area.
Almost a decade ago, pharmaceutical remedies had driven me further into depression rather than alleviating the problem, leaving me no option but to consider the physical in search of a way out of my immobilizing mental darkness.
It is impossible to convey the therapeutic cleansing that occurred almost immediately after my first kayaking journey. An early morning dose of nature, fresh air and sea water, accompanied by the light almost imperceptible exercise of core stomach muscles and the upper and lower body, moves the darkness of black thoughts rapidly. Over months, my mind moved from the physical to the metaphysical as the rhythm of the deep sea water connecting with the kayak paddle merged into a mantra for meditation. Slowly but surely as this pattern of movement became regular, a new awareness emerged driven by an inner voice that spoke to me in ways where depression was no longer the main character.
As it did, my mind discovered the core of a visceral experience in a surprising manner – the surface of the water opened my mind to new pleasurable doorways of perception. Digital technology in the form of first an iPhone 6 camera, then a Sony RX100 Compact Camera and later a Canon G7X and photo-editing software Adobe Lightroom, enabled me to capture these fleeting moments in a series of abstract photographs.
These photographs represent for me how the power of physical movement in kayaking and the movements on the surface of the water can synthesize to act as creative inspiration freeing the mind of mental darkness to heal, recharge and inspire the inner self.
Middle Harbour, Sydney, Australia facing north
About Ralph Kerle – Abstract digital photographic artist
Ralph Kerle is one of Australia’s foremost contemporary abstract art photographers, based in Sydney, Australia. His work has been featured in numerous photography exhibitions and galleries in Australia and world-wide. He creates photographic art by capturing real abstract images that exist in nature, focusing on water surfaces to create an abstract form of ocean and nature art photography.
Ralph’s work reflects his meditative and therapeutic experiences kayaking on Sydney’s harbour, where observing abstract images on the water’s surface opened his mind to new doorways of perception and creative inspiration. His digital art photography seeks to represent and communicate these transcendental moments experienced on the water.
Before his emergence as a photo artist, Ralph had been involved in fine art in Australia since the 1970s, graduating from the Victorian College of The Arts majoring in Dramatic Arts in 1979 and with a Masters in Creative Industries. He came to prominence in Australia in the early 90s as an arts pioneer in multi-media performance whilst he was Associate Director of Sydney Theatre Company. This work led him to a decade or so in directing TV commercials with Australia’s leading advertising agencies.
Ralph Kerle’s Abstract photographic art
This series of work represents a return to and re-interpretation of his earlier multi-media work in a domain that has now metamorphosed into photographic art. His focus is on the capture of images created by and in nature and the conceptualization of those images into fine art abstract photographic artworks and it is through his past creative experiences, he has developed this unique visual style – “his aesthetic eye.”
His work is now held in corporate and private collections in Australia, China, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Latvia, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, UAE, United Kingdom and the USA.
Watch the artist at work
