Miller Art Gallery presents … Cindy McDaniel

Published 8:30 am Sunday, August 29, 2010

    Meridian resident Cindy McDaniel, a self-taught photographer and digital artist, will bring her talents to the Miller Art Gallery when the gallery opens its first show of the season on Monday.

    The opening reception celebrating the show gets under way at 4:30 p.m. in the Ivy Hall gallery. MCC faculty, staff and community are welcomed to attend.

    McDaniel noted she is a “self-taught Photoshop user, button pusher. I dabbled in both acrylic painting and photography before digital came along,” she said.

    A whole new way of creating art opened up with digital tools that artists have access to, McDaniel said.

    “I have an overwhelming desire to express myself through the digital

medium as it lets you create something entirely different from an image, or even an artistic collage from several different images,” McDaniel said.

    In a web article McDaniel said, “Sometimes I combine mediums but mostly I work from just my photos in Photoshop. Portraits aren’t all I create but I get many requests for them because of the fact that I try and tie

who that person is or what they want to convey into those portraits. It’s a bit

more personal, or even more extreme than the usual ‘sit still, say cheese!’ I

guess like many artists, I create to find my own identity, voice, purpose and

truth. It’s who we are.”

    Others are pleased with her work. A person viewing her art told McDaniel that “it’s obvious that you have the knack of taking great people pictures. I think that your compositional instinct and your obvious empathy for your subjects make you into a powerful photographer, and that you should be careful not to drown that precious talent in too much post production. You really do have what it takes: buckets of soul!”

    The show will be on display in the gallery through Sept. 30. The Miller Gallery is open Monday through Thursday, from 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; and Friday by appointment only.

    For more information, contact John Marshall, (601) 484-8647.