Barry Underwood's large super-saturated color prints are striking at first glance. In fact, a fiction is being created here with light, color, and framing, pulling the viewer into a new, somewhat mythical environment. Issues relating to contemporary painting and film also come into play as the artist considers illusion, imagination, and narrative, the potential of the ordinary transformed into the extraordinary through light and composition. Underwood's surreal photographs are a cross-pollination between static and performing art. The photographs suggest a happening-a secret unnatural moment in the natural world-that the artist has chanced upon and been able to record. When thinking about the genesis of these works, Underwood drew less from the realm of the fantastic and instead looked to his immediate surroundings to draw inspiration, fusing autobiography with fiction.
