Cheryl Hrudka and Stan Johnson have been professional photographers for over twenty years.  Like most new photographers, they initially embraced the assumed verisimilitude of the “out there”.  But the dispassion of the camera and its mechanical (documentary) implications were tempered by a warmer vision.  Their early works are lyrical and whimsical.  Each shuns the concept of the intervening intelligence and invite the viewer into a direct and altogether personal relationship.  Like the early masters of the medium, they assumed the role of a fundamentalist.  The viewer need not be told what to think.  He or she is gently reminded of a knowledge long since gained and intuitively held.  Their early work is an engraved invitation.    You can return to their work again and again.  Their photographs become your friends.

Cheryl’s and Stan’s recent work has evolved from “out there” to “in here”. Each new work takes an increasing interest in the everyday objects that people see, but don't really look at as they walk by them. This is what led them to the infinite possibilities of abstraction. Not strangely, the abstractions maintain the intimacy of previous work.  Again the invitation is tantamount.  The viewer’s conclusions are never threatened, but respected and allowed to prosper.  On these mandalas, we each transpose our own version of events, our own stories.  These images are at once geometric and biomorphic.  In their mutability,

they mimic our dreams.  They mimic our lives. 

"Our main goal is to allow the viewer to become intimate with the images, to make his / her interpretation of what they are seeing a personal journey of their own."