THESE TWO GROUPS ARE SHAPED CANVASES with Giclee collage images printed on canvas and stretched on 1 1/2" deep wood stretcher bars. Flowers extend at times beyond the framed background borders.
They are all created digitally through scans of flowers and other actual objects on a flatbed scanner, collaged together on a computer, and printed as Giclee's at high quality and high resolution on superb CANVAS material, stretched on 1 1/2" deep stretcher bars, and ready to hang without a frame. Watercolor Giclee prints are also available.
"F-Stop" Giclee shaped canvas work.
"Pink Amaryllis" shaped canvas work.
My Intentions for Floral Shaped Canvases.
Perhaps the most intriguing new element of these works is the pushing of the flower shapes outside the square, rectangular of their geometric shaped backgrounds. The flower shapes extend outside the boundaries giving the piece a more three dimensional physical presence. Conceptually it continues a long standing interest to take objects and visually have them push beyond what might be taken as the border or limits of the picture plane.
I am also continuing the use scanned flowers as major visual elements as they show us most clearly about layers of life cycles. They are ever changing, evolving, in simple, powerful, and beautiful forms, intricate in their breathtaking detail and complexity. But these as objects also present my love for exciting organic shapes of infinite variety.
Creative Process.
Most of the objects I include in my works are initially scanned on a large bed (11x17) flatbed scanner in order to get finer detail and to get a special quality of lighting. I usually scan at higher resolutions to get a 50 to100 Mb image, anticipating making large format Giclee prints. I rarely use digital camera images.
In Photoshop I create the background first, sometimes using images derived from a scan of materials, or of paint on glass, or an abstract background drawn in Photoshop, or occasionally a digital camera image. I then open multiple images from which I select out desired portions which I drag and drop onto the background creating new layers which can be moved, rotated, re-sized, or manipulated in the collage process. Frequently I have somewhere between 10 to 30 layers and the collage process may take several hours or sometimes days.
The construction of the shaped pieces start with the printing out geometric shaped backgrounds derived from scans of various textures or from digital still images collaged in Photoshop. This is stretched on a 1 1/2" deep wood frame just like a painting. On this is glued a second layer of canvas cut outs of flowers some of which extend beyond the picture/frame edge. Wood blocks 1 1/2" deep are attached to support these canvas edge extensions which are then glued down to the wood. After that the visible sides of the wood blocks are painted with acrylic to match the colors and textures of the printed flowers which wrap around the 1 1/2" sides of the piece.
Display.
I prefer to make the shaped works on canvas because I believe that in this way they gain more of a physical presence. I also am able to achieve more vivid coloration which is important to me.
Also because the canvas prints are stretched on wood stretcher bars the image surface projects 1 1/2 inches out from the wall plane. Prints come with wire on the back and are ready to hang. Also the shaped
Giclee canvas print on white with
white side edges.
Giclee canvas print on gray with
gray wrapped side edges.
