Artist David Aaron Sercel was born in the beautiful Rocky Mountains of Colorado in 1986, and now resides in Florence, Alabama, where he is pursuing a degree in Fine Arts at the University of North Alabama.

Since early childhood David as enjoyed various forms of art and has continued to expand his artistic interests. He currently works in the mediums of photography, sculpture, and painting, producing works that celebrate the beauty of the natural world.

David’s work has been recognized at shows and competitions across the southeast, receiving numerous first place and best of show awards and his works are included in private and corporate collections nationwide.

Artist Statement

"Creating art, for me, has always begun with the desire to share with others the beauty I see around me: to preserve and highlight those things that inspire and excite me aesthetically and emotionally, and communicate the value I see in them to others. Through my photography, I attempt to share with others the beauty and wonder I experience in the world around me.

Light and texture, and the interplay of the two, have always fascinated me aesthetically, and they are the two primary elements that really draw me to a particular subject, which is why much of my most recent work is executed in black and white. The black and white image distills a subject down to light and shadow alone, emphasizing the formal and textural elements of a subject and the quality of the light. Through black and white imagery I feel I can most often more fully express the aesthetic excitement I experience in response to my subjects.

For me, the quality of light is perhaps the most important influence in creating a successful photograph – under the right illumination, even the most ordinary thing, with no real interest in and of itself, as an object, can through the photograph be elevated to an image of incredible beauty – and quite often a photograph is not primarily about the actual physical object in the image, but rather it is about the way light interacts with that object. Objects and scenes possess an abstract aesthetic value that is created by the interplay of light on their forms and textures, and exists apart from the specificities of what the objects are – and it is that abstract play of light, shadow and texture that, for me, creates the aesthetic excitement that I attempt to convey in my photography. So, before considering a subject on any other level, I see it first as an arrangement of light and shade, form and texture transcribed onto a flat surface – the final print – and it must work on this abstract level before any other traits of the image can be considered or expressed.

I have always been especially drawn to the landscape as a subject for my photography, both because of the inspiration I receive from my love of experiencing the grandeur of nature and wild places, and because the subject offers a wonderful opportunity for artistic discovery and interpretation. The world of nature can seem to be a chaotic arrangement of trees, rocks, hills and mountains scattered across the landscape, but if one pays attention, formal compositions begin to emerge – interrelations of forms and textures, light and shade – coming together to form order and beauty. The process is one of discovering and recognizing formal relations among objects in the landscape and organizing them into an aesthetic and expressive order. I find this process of discovery exhilarating.

In my photography, I look for these “found compositions” in nature - interrelations of forms, shapes, and values - arranging them in my viewfinder to first of all form pleasing and formal abstract arrangements that express the aesthetic excitement that I feel in the scene, and secondly to share with others the power and inspiration I have always found in the natural landscape. I attempt to emphasize the formal order and beauty that can be found in nature, expressed through the dramatic interplay of light and shadow across the landscape."