HAND-PAINTED SYMBIOSIS

A collaborative series by Sharon Cannon & Don Saban

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What happens when decades of photographic precision meet the spontaneity of oil paint? I didn’t know either—until I stood in front of one of Don Saban’s images, palette knife in hand, unsure if I dared make the first mark. This is the story of how I began painting over Don’s photographs—and discovered a whole new kind of collaboration.

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One day I began looking back at the pieces I painted over Don Saban’s photographs and realized how much I liked them—not just as a first step toward our Symbiosis collaboration, but as stand-alone works with a voice of their own.

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At first, I was paralyzed. The idea of putting oil paint on one of Don’s beautiful images felt almost sacrilegious. His photographs—forty years of LA history captured with artistic precision—hung there on my paint board for weeks. I stared at that first print, frozen. What could I possibly add to this?

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And then one day, I just poured out some paint, picked up my palette knife, and began. To my surprise, the paint didn’t disrupt the photo—it extended it. Transformed it. My confidence grew. I kept going. Each piece became its own kind of dialogue between the photograph and the paint.