Bryan Gilligan

I'm a graduate student at Fort Hays State University, going for my MFA in Photography and currently possess a BFA in Photography and a BS in Secondary Education. I have a wonderful wife and daughter who help to keep me motivated and provide grounding in reality.

I have always been interested in art, more as an escape than anything else, and for a time in my life I almost lost that. Moving to Kansas and being able to finish my Bachelor?s Degree in Fine Art rekindled that smoldering flame. The difference this time was that it was not an escape anymore, it had become a desire to see things anew and to share what I saw with everyone who would take the time to look.

When I get behind the lens and start taking pictures, I feel as if I am stepping outside of myself, viewing the world through a fresh set of eyes. This is in part why I have chosen to take this a step further by fragmenting the images I see to create new harmonies of shape and perspective or to create new levels of tension where there may not have been any before.

When I draw the idea is the same, to explore shapes and designs in ways that haven?t before been played with. The merging of photographic imagery with drawings allows me to combine the two aspects of my art that are the most meaningful to me and create new ideas for people to absorb and reflect upon. Over the years I have been influenced--not only in terms of my artwork in some cases, but in terms of my reasons to continue pursuing art--by both fine artists like Kandinsky and Mondrian as well as modern artists like Alvin Coburn, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Jim Lee, H.R. Giger and Luis Royo.

This current project of digital vortography is directly inspired by Coburn's explorations into the same so many years ago, with the exception that we are capable of exploring these ideas much more deeply than was possible before.

Bryan Gilligan's art on the Web

Bryan Gilligan's AutoGallery exhibit