Rhonda LaPorte

Rhonda LaPorte is a Rhode Island based photographer, currently living in Hopkinton.  Her passion for photography began at an early age after receiving her first camera from her father.  After developing her first roll of film, she was hooked and rarely went anywhere without it.  After a career in fundraising for various non-profits for fifteen years, she decided to pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Rhode Island, which she completed in 2015.  She has exhibited in several group shows winning several awards for her work.

Her deep connection to the natural world, often has her photographing the vast and beautiful landscapes she encounters daily.  Currently Rhonda is working on landscape photographs that explore both the location and style of the Romantic Artists.  Her work has her photographing throughout New England and other locations throughout United States.

Artist Statement

Constantly changing with the hour, the weather and the season, the visual emotional potential of landscape is endless.  Our world is dramatic, inspiring and beautiful.  In art, landscape often served as merely a backdrop for other subjects such as village life, mythologies or portraits.   With the rise of industrialization came an increasing separation from the landscape, and in turn a search for a lost Eden.  It is no coincidence that the landscape, with its moods and spirituality, increasingly became more of a focus for artists.  Today, we are still living a life very far away from our natural world.  Now more than ever we are searching for Eden, a place to find a peace and a connection to the land that we are missing from our daily lives.  It is this search that inspires my work as an artist.

As a photographer and digital artist my subject is often the landscape.  My process starts with the search for my Eden, the place that stirs in me that sense of peace and bliss and evokes an emotional response in me.  Once back in my studio I become not only a photographer processing a photo, but a painter as well.  Using Photoshop, I process my photos and convert them to black and white.  I then digitally paint all my photographs.  I create a palette digitally, much like a painter would traditionally, mixing colors that I feel would best express my emotional response to that particular landscape.  I choose to create my pieces this way not only for the aesthetic that it gives the work, but also to connect with the landscape it represents more intimately.  My hand touches every leaf, blade of grass, every cloud, mountain and waterway.  My reverence for the land grows with each stroke and that reverence is communicated through my work.  Ultimately, I feel my work is a way to preserve and hold on to something, that sadly, is disappearing.   I wish to inspire others to search for their Eden and connect on a deeper level once again to the land.