“The sum of Todd Weinstein’s photography splendidly embodies his lifelong abiding influences from art of the senses and art of the spirit. Yet, while strongly informed by those influences, it brings to bear Todd’s own experience of the perennial subjects of light and darkness, life and death, love and hate, pleasure and pain – these and other fundamental polarities that define, sustain and propel our lives. In so doing, Todd’s work is not only a representation of life, but a part of life itself.”

The word “influence” itself demonstrates its literal meaning of “to flow into.” The word has its source in the Latin word “fluvius” –“river”.

Influences from the past inform art of the present, which then, in turn, influences art of what will be the future. This process suggests – indeed, requires – continuity, a deep connection with sources that the artist, made in the image of the Creator, channels into his or her own work. For that work to embody relevance beyond its own self and its own time, it must spring from the waters, the influences, that sustain tradition and community and thus a shared experience. Radical severance from tradition produces not “revolutionary” art, but merely lonely and eventually lifeless outliers. Yet, at the same time, in order for that work to be more than sterile replication of tradition, to be more than rote derivation – therein lies the task forever confronting the artist of any time and place: to be part of tradition, yet to produce novelty, to square the circle of harmonizing being and becoming. Thus, there is no path from Bach to Wagner that does not go through Beethoven; there is no path from Michelangelo to Picasso that does not go through Monet.

- Dr. Lance W. Garmer