Erin O'Keefe's "Painterly" Photographs

Erin O'Keefe creates a really cool hybrid mode of visual art. Her pieces look a lot like paintings, but they are actually photos taken of objects (wooden, I think) that she has sculpted, painted, and arranged just so, to give the appearance of an elegant abstract painting. Her light sources and camera settings must work together to give it that flat look. I like how the shadows become part of the composition. From what I understand, they are not Photoshopped or reworked after the fact, after the act of shooting. Her influences run to the early 20th century abstract or semi-abstract painters who worked with geometrics and the skewed perspectives of cubism, such as Leger and El Lissitsky. I relate to what she is doing, since, as you may have noticed, my favored mode of photography is to create abstract images. I tend to work with found objects from my office, but her more ambitious staging of her compositions is inspiring.