CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/6/2017

The pen-and-ink 'photography' of Tommy Kane

“I am bombarded with photography on a daily basis,” Tommy Kane writes in his new monograph, All My Photographs Are Made with Pens. “My Facebook, Instagram and interweb are filled with people’s shots of food, pets, vacations, sunsets, and any other whim their shutter fingers deem important. All of this imagery overload has come to make me realize that my drawings and paintings are really just the photographs I would have taken if I were not obsessed with sketchbooks. Because each one takes so many hours to hand craft, they are far more compelling to look at than just plain old photos. As an artist, my time is spent searching out visuals that interest me and then capturing them. Imagine a camera that had a little man inside who was sitting at an easel. When you click the shutter, he takes four hours to paint a picture that eventually get spit out of the camera into your hands. That’s basically what I do.”