Still Newfoundland is a series of 9 two-dimensional collages. I collected wild flora and foliage while hiking in Newfoundland and supplemented that material with bought flowers. I scanned the plants by putting them directly on a home office scanner, thereby digitized them at very high resolutions (1,600 pixels per inch). The shallow depth of field of the scanner renders the parts of the plants that are touching the glass in extreme detail but the imagery sharpness falls off quickly. By placing the flowers and foliage on a flat-bed scanner I can play with perspective. The resulting images have an unusual orientation that I could not obtain by taking a photograph of them. I then collage the digitized images together to create the compositions. Each image would be 6 feet square if it were printed out as intended. The files I’m working with are between 3 and 6 gigabits depending on how many layers they contain because they are so large and detailed.
This work is a meditation on the nature of nature. By combining flowers and leaves gathered locally in Newfoundland with bought flowers from many different geographic regions the work interrogates our conception of the natural and the local. How in the era of the Anthropocene do we understand the interconnected global environment? I’m interrogating the history of plant migration and cultivation. The work also investigates notions of beauty and fascination with nature’s forms and means—for example, the exacting detail of tiny filaments, repeat pattern, incredibly subtle colour gradations. It also references the compositional qualities, luminosity and symbolism of historical work such as the memento mori.
Still Newfoundland is a series of 9 two-dimensional collages. I collected wild flora and foliage while hiking in Newfoundland and supplemented that material with bought flowers. I scanned the plants by putting them directly on a home office scanner, thereby digitized them at very high resolutions (1,600 pixels per inch). The shallow depth of field of the scanner renders the parts of the plants that are touching the glass in extreme detail but the imagery sharpness falls off quickly. By placing the flowers and foliage on a flat-bed scanner I can play with perspective. The resulting images have an unusual orientation that I could not obtain by taking a photograph of them. I then collage the digitized images together to create the compositions. Each image would be 6 feet square if it were printed out as intended. The files I’m working with are between 3 and 6 gigabits depending on how many layers they contain because they are so large and detailed.
This work is a meditation on the nature of nature. By combining flowers and leaves gathered locally in Newfoundland with bought flowers from many different geographic regions the work interrogates our conception of the natural and the local. How in the era of the Anthropocene do we understand the interconnected global environment? I’m interrogating the history of plant migration and cultivation. The work also investigates notions of beauty and fascination with nature’s forms and means—for example, the exacting detail of tiny filaments, repeat pattern, incredibly subtle colour gradations. It also references the compositional qualities, luminosity and symbolism of historical work such as the memento mori.