David Culton
Maker Monday - July 2026
About the Artist
Name: David Culton
Medium: photography
Years creating: 40 years
SCAA Member since: 2024
Based in: Westerly, RI
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theplayoflight/
Click an image to view portfolio slideshow
This month we’re diving in to the fine art photography of David Culton. Though David didn’t join as a member until 2024, he has been involved with SCAA since 2017, exhibiting his photographs with us.
David’s work explores light, time, and abstraction, creating images that range from quiet landscapes to painterly studies of color, motion, and form. He draws inspiration from Japanese aesthetics and the beauty found in ordinary moments. His photographs have been exhibited in galleries, museums, and juried exhibitions, and his work is held in private collections. When he's not behind the camera, David works as an innovation consultant, helping organizations see familiar challenges from new perspectives, and has performed as a professional magician. - SCAA
Where are you from, and what do you make?
I live in beautiful Westerly, Rhode Island, but I grew up in central Connecticut and lived in Japan for eight years. As a kid, I used to spend my summers down here camping at Burlingame and swimming at the local beaches, so it's pretty wonderful to now call this place home.
I create fine art photographs in both color and black and white. Much of my work explores the idea of time in photography – from very fast exposures to very long ones, and everything in between. Those different time scales help me see the world not as a frozen instant, but as something constantly unfolding.
How long have you been seriously pursuing art?
(Laughs.) "Seriously" is a relative term.
I've been making art with serious intention for about forty years, since college, but over the last ten years or so I've focused on it much more as a formal part of my life – exhibiting in shows, selling my work, and sharing it with a wider audience.
What inspires you to create?
To me, beauty is all around us, all the time. I love finding that beauty and sharing my own vision of it with others. Whenever I head out with my camera – whether it's in my garden or in some far-flung location around the world – I'm always looking for the combination of form, light, and circumstance that creates something wonderful. That beauty might be pristine, or it might be weathered and rundown. Either can be equally compelling to me. I also love the way photography can reveal things our eyes don't naturally see – whether it's the geometry of a split-second or the flow that emerges over several seconds or even minutes.
Though my photographs often appear painterly or abstract, everything begins with something that actually existed in front of my camera. I don't "Photoshop" or create scenes digitally. While I find that an interesting avenue for artistic exploration, I haven't yet run out of fascinating things to discover in the "real world".
Which artist outside of your chosen medium has had the most impact on your art? What do they do, and in what way do they influence you?
That's a hard one. There are so many amazing artists. But I think I'd have to say my pottery sensei in Japan, Takushi Haraguchi. Although he worked in clay rather than light, he taught me to see natural forms and beauty through a disciplined and technical approach. He also taught me a lot about the Japanese idea of wabi-sabi – finding beauty in imperfection and impermanence. Those lessons have stayed with me and absolutely influence the way I see and compose photographs today.
Ask me about him sometime and I'll tell you a fun story of a lesson learned, and one of my most memorable and beautiful moments as an artist.
Is there a work of art that has changed your life or how you view the world in some way?
Another challenging question.
I keep a collection of beautiful artwork that I discover, and I'm adding to it almost every day because I'm constantly amazed by what people are creating across so many different mediums. That said, I'd probably have to choose Henri Cartier-Bresson's Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare. He coined the idea of the "Decisive Moment" – that perfect instant when everything comes together in a way that one moment earlier or later simply wouldn't. In this photograph, he captures a man jumping from a ladder stretched across a puddle. His foot is suspended just above the water, and you instinctively know he's not going to make it. There's so much energy and tension packed into a single instant. It completely changed the way I thought about photography, timing, and the power of observation.
As a member of SCAA, what do you like most about us?
Finally, an easy question!
The people. Everyone at SCAA has made me feel welcomed and supported from the very beginning. The staff feel like family, and the artists are incredibly generous and open. There's a genuine sense that people want one another to succeed, and that creates a wonderful atmosphere for sharing our work together in such a beautiful space.
Tell us a joke.
What did the janitor say when he jumped out of the closet?
"Supplies!”