My new work continues to explore the concepts of duality and transformation expressed through botanical cyanotypes. While the technique and process is the same, the pictures of tree bark, twigs and vines represent a shift from the expression of tenuous balance and fragility to expansive strength and power. Using the natural texture and patterns of the subject matter in combination with the photographic technique of motion blur and digital composite I am creating images that are becoming more abstract and monumental.

Limbo is an ongoing series of botanical cyanotype prints about impermanence, transformation, and regeneration. The native plants, leaves and tree bark I photograph exhibit the marks of time, climate, and insects. I employ photographic methods like motion blur and digital compositing to further the evolution process and capture both the fear and allure of transition between opposing states of being.

This series of photomontages in diptych form explore the manipulation and transformation of art historical facts into photographic fiction. Photographing the paintings is an act of dissection and liberates the parts from their original context. The photographic artifacts are like memories that can be interpreted, distorted and manipulated. I use the diptych format to explore the shifting nature of memory and how interpretation of information is altered by gender, context and time. The diptych as a whole offers a narrative that questions and subverts the facts of the original image, while each part represents a version of that newly constructed narrative. My intention is to create an image in flux between dualities: painting and photograph, part and whole, reality and fiction, past and present, male and female. Within the open-ended narratives of the pseudo historic images, I hope the viewer recognizes contemporary themes about conflict, anxiety, oppression and identity.

As an art history student, I learned that iconic works of art were unique and priceless, to be guarded and venerated like sacred truths. Now I approach those same paintings as a curious photographer, questioning and dissecting them with each exposure. The fractured pieces are manipulated and transformed into a remix, a visual palimpsest as one work becomes entwined with another. The novelty and drama of the remix is seductive and deceptive.

My photographs of old master paintings represent selected facts. The photographs, once liberated from the original artworks are like memories subject to interpretation, distortion and manipulation. Elements from various paintings are woven into constructed narratives inspired by experiences, dreams, fears and fantasies. The surrealistic tableaux question and subvert the facts of the original images and represent a historic painting that never really existed but tell stories of silent intimidation and manipulation that never cease to exist. My intention is to create an image that wavers between dualities: painting and photograph, reality and fiction, past and present, true and false.

Each 15”x20” archival pigment print is mounted on a cradled birch panel and covered with layers of encaustic medium that creates a rich, luminous, and irregular surface. The wax and mounting technique provides the digitally manipulated photographs with a tactile and physical presence that evokes the historic artwork that inspired them.

There are secret stories hidden beneath the sumptuous surface of old master portraits. The paintings, unchanged for decades, are relics of idealized beauty, wealth and privilege. The subjects gaze at each other across the museum gallery, isolated by frames, genres, time period. The modern day viewer visits the museum and moves fluidly from one gallery to the next. Pausing, looking, passing by, remembering bits and pieces. The experience is a visual palimpsest as one work becomes entwined with another. Inspired by that experience, I appropriate, juxtapose and integrate parts of paintings to create an art history remix. The remix is a fiction that tells a tale of my own invention.

I gather the elements used to create the multi-layered and surrealistic compositions by photographing original paintings hanging in museums. I approach each painting like a photographer, isolating and selecting parts from the larger whole. I transform, manipulate, and interweave photographs of multiple paintings to construct a historic painting that was never painted. My intention is to create an image that wavers between dualities: painting and photograph, reality and fiction, past and present. I hope the viewer shares my sense of eerie familiarity with the newly constructed narratives, recognizing shifting memories, fragmented dreams, and dark secrets within.