Kip has two different working styles. One consists of minimalist seascapes, the other of environmental portraits and street photographs. Works are treated very differently. The seascapes are mainly in color and captured with a lot of time, while the street works are mainly in black and white and are captured quickly.
In South Shore Suite, the horizon is our reference point in the landscape. It is from him that we determine the scale and the distance. It is the liminal edge where the sky touches the earth. It provides the baseline for perspective drawings and gives the eye its cues. Since moving to Nova Scotia in 2004, Kip has been walking almost every day along the Atlantic coast and has learned to observe changes in light. According to him, light has a special quality there. It seeps into your soul and is part of your way of seeing the world. According to his words, he roams this shore with his dog like a stroller of light that marks the protean edge of the horizon.
"When you live on the edge of a continent, the elemental powers of time, wind and waves make you lose your sentimentality towards nature. Here you feel the strength of the ocean at night, when it reduces granite blocks into sand. After the storms, whole sections of the coast disappeared. Hurricanes snatch docks and lay sofas on the beach. The direction of the wind determines how you navigate your boat and which trees will be next to be knocked over.
The images gathered here are distillations of many walks where the wind carried almost everything except the transcendent light. I’m a street photographer by inclination. The coast has become the street where I walk most often. This series of minimal seascapes focuses on the horizon. This intangible, unknowable and sometimes invisible edge between the sky and the water."