To this artist, the urban site offers the viewer the opportunity to examine and consider the relationship between personal experiences and the larger formats created by society’s accumulated development. The questions of good or bad are proffered without prejudice. Nature, contained behind the fences of manufactured needs, is treated with the same concern and care as that of the open wildernesses of the nineteenth century painters.
In his works, Semergieff contrives to elicit a light that fosters reflection. The color builds the light, inviting viewers to make this mental tour of their visual experiences. His sources for these works invoke Albert Cuyp, Edward Hopper, Rackstraw Downes and, more recently, Antonio Lopez Garcia. In the recent works, there has been an inverse exchange between man-made elements and nature, where nature now comprises a larger proportion of attention – perhaps suggesting the true scale of human endeavors to those of nature.