Ned Pratt’s lifelong connection to Newfoundland is profoundly ingrained in his artistic practice. Through a process of long and repeated observation of its landscape, Pratt finds colour and shape in unexpected locations to create his minimal and abstract compositions. His remarkable ability to bring complex and unrelated elements together in visual harmony extends to both rural and urban subjects, such as fishing sheds, construction sites, and car parks.
Over the past year, Pratt has focused his time on areas that are most familiar to him, those near his home on the Avalon Peninsula. His familiarity and personal connection with the locations he explores in Place infuse his photographs with a deep sense of intimacy and tranquility.
For me, each of these images is really about place, about where I have found myself in brief windows of solitude. All of these places are familiar and secure. Order, beauty, silence - when everything else in life seems like a mass of steel wool - a luxury of quiet and deep observation of place is kindly offered from somewhere else.
- Ned Pratt
An important recent shift in Pratt’s photographic practice is his use of a more panoramic format. While the sky and rugged terrain of Newfoundland previously held important positions in his work, found elements of structure and shape now dominate his compositions. This longer “window” view of the landscape has opened up countless compositional possibilities for Pratt, allowing him to revisit subjects that he longed to capture from an unexplored perspective.
