Portfolio > Wild Gardens

_The Wild Garden is a new series begun as a technical exercise in tri- and quad- color gum dichromate printing, registration, and color. I wanted to find a denser, darker, more saturated way to work after my working in desert landscapes for several years. All of the images come from a remote dirt road in Western New York State. Abandoned farm gardens mix with natural wild flowers all along the dirt road. A Sense of forlorn melancholy mixed with exuberant life and joy permeate the place. This is the beginning of my visual exploration of this place in gum but as a young artist I roamed this area and I return to it often as an adult. The visual chaos and peace draw me back to it time and time again.


Gum prints, an alternative photographic process from the 1800’s, are photographs made from exposing watercolor pigments, gum Arabic and light sensitive dichromate. Each image is hand printed in multiple registrations from cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK, quad tone), or Red, Green, Blue ( RGB tri-color) digital negatives on watercolor papers. The colors blend optically to produce full color images.