Walls fade into misty landscapes and doors open to allow the seawater to rush in. A work such as “My Mother’s House” looks normal, at first glance, with a mahogany dinning room table, painted pine floors and a braided rug. But the wild wallpaper is not what you’d find in your mother’s house and at the far left edge of the composition, the wall gives way to reveal an outdoor view that may or may not really exist.
A collection of Becton’s surreal digital montages are on view at the Domaine Gallery in Portland, where he is represented. His work has appeared in the biennial juried exhibitions at the Portland Museum of Art and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. It also can be found in the permanent collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art, The Farnsworth Museum, United Technologies Corp. and other corporate and private collections.
Becton, who has a degree in graphic design from the Yale School of Art, says his journey into the world of digitally manipulated images started as a lark when he volunteered to alter a photo for a nonprofit and got his first exposure to the computer program PhotoShop. From there he began to play around with his black and white photography, later bringing in color and sometimes scanned mixed media.
“I found that I could find this place that I was creating, and it felt comfortable and creative at the same time,” Becton says. “And the fact I hadn’t seen anything like it before was interesting to me.”
The surreal spirit of his images hints at the very nature of Maine, where mystery lurks in undisturbed coastlines and darkened forests and clings to the shadows cast inside historic homes. At the same time, the pieces conjure fleeting memories of dreamscapes and speak to the multifaceted layers of our own souls. Because while we might look as solid as an old house on the outside, inside we may really be drifting across a vast ocean.