E BEE BANTUG

ARTIST BIO

Asian-American E Bee Bantug has worked as an advertising and graphics design professional in Asia, Europe, and the US, presently a co-founder & Managing Partner at an IT solutions firm; and since 2013, also a visual artist, professionally. This last decade found her moving from Austin TX to a small mountain town in Southern Oregon, an unexpectedly serendipitous life-altering experience in every way; but most specially, toward a most exciting provocative creative journey characterized by the convergence of her lifelong deep interest in the natural world and practice of visual arts, metaphysics and spirituality.

Totally self-taught, E Bee considers her keen appreciation and practice of art in its visual, literary, music and performing forms to be her lifelong art mentor and inspiration. Although she has always noodled, doodled, for as long as she remembers, a hike through the ancient Latgawa tribal land in Oregon one summer afternoon in 2013 transformed her image creation; becoming ‘enLightened’, literally and figuratively. Since that fortuitous hike, natural light and its movement in the Aether has become her signature inspiration, giving rise to her brand LightExpressionist that characterizes her uniquely original and unrepeatable imagery ever since.

Today, driven to prove more to herself than to anyone else about the dynamic interplay of intentionality, consciousness and aetheric energies that surround our fast-paced life, she carves out time almost daily to create her experimental crossover visual imagery. She hopes her work encourages greater personal awareness, inquiry and dialog about quantum reality, its liminal presence, and a new perception about the art of photography.

E Bee’s work has been featured in Arizona, Virginia, NYC, San Francisco, Oregon, London, Zurich, Lisbon, and continues to receive awards online, art events, magazines; local and international.


ARTIST STATEMENT

borne of light:
fleeting
boundless

hints at genesis unfolding:
unseen worlds in a speck of dust
fractal dimensions untold

hold still this quantum moment

Often, I am moved to write verses to express in words the exhilarating wonder I feel following moments of image-making

I am fascinated with natural light and its unpredictable organic movement in the aether. Aether –that 'mysterious substance once thought to suffuse the universe' as one dictionary puts it– is magnificently alive and pregnant. Indeed, aether (which, as I experience since 2013, still suffuses the Universe) along with natural Light, are both the bountiful medium and matrix that animate and drive my expressionistic abstract, crossover, camera-based art.

Technically, to create my imagery, I deliberately use only my camera as one would a paintbrush; consciously aiming not to capture objects, people, places; instead, to explore, tease out and create one-of-a-kind/unrepeatable ephemeral images that break through surface 3D physical reality. Aesthetically and conceptually, I cast out realism totally from my thought and creative process; intuitively allowing my inner vision and consciousness to interact with natural light in time-space at the given moment. Racing after movements of light, I literally paint expressionist imagery, unexpected vantage points and perspectives, bridging the edges between photography and painting, both in character and impression. And, later, even more deliberately, I do not Photoshop or digitally manipulate nor add strokes nor filters to my images, post-creation.

Practicing this art form is an unending joyful journey of discovery for me; the rewards of which often reveal astounding thought-provoking breakthroughs behind the proverbial veil and defy the conventions of traditional photography. Each imagery is a visual presence; a communion with the abundantly rich energetic multidimensional reality and vital essence rarely accessible, often hidden, vaguely perceptible, yet which at each moment infinitely surround our busy fast-paced lives.