This is a collaborative project that looks back at 20 places that have affected us over our 20 years of marriage and 22 years together. When we first met in 1991 in Baltimore at the Maryland Institute College of Art, we both felt far away from our respective homes - Sarah from Scotland and Blake from Texas. During Sarah’s six-week stay in Baltimore, we visited nearby locations such as Gettysburg battlefield in Pennsylvania, Virginia’s Blue Ridge Parkway, and not-so-nearby places like Memphis, Tennessee (how could one visit America and not see Graceland?).

Some of our most memorable moments over the past twenty years have been those we identify with particular places we’ve lived or visited. We each believe that considerable aspects of our personal identities were formed by the places we grew up and visited. Our individual experiences with particular places were intertwined with intensity, excitement, reflection, and affirmation. All of these qualities remain true of our combined, collaborative life together. As artists, many of those moments and places have found their way into the images we make.

We have chosen 20 places to arbitrarily correspond with the number of years we’ve been married, but also to push us as artists to revisit some of the places and subjects that we have not, for various reasons, celebrated as much as others but which have provided subtle perspective and quality. From now until our anniversary on 31 July, 2013, we will post images related to three or four places per month. This project is not intended to represent a travelogue of any sort, as we do not regard ourselves as being nearly as well-traveled as we would prefer. Also, there are places we have visited, sometimes with regularity, for which we recall our affection for the people there more than the place itself – so no offense to our cherished Minnesotans, there will not be any pictures of Minneapolis! Perhaps that will constitute a different project someday.

For the project, we will respond to each place with our respective visions and with our media of choice – painting for Sarah and photography for Blake. There may be places, especially Colorado and Scotland, that we address multiple times representing extended durations and visits to multiple sites. There also may be places for which we will post fun, frivolous, or touristy pictures in addition to the serious ones.

We have often found that when we make the sometimes-intense effort to get away from the focused priorities, expectations, and conveniences of our urban life, we seek quiet places where we are reminded of the very elemental reasons that first bound us to each other. That is, most of all, what we hope is reflected in these images.

Sarah and Blake