About Abstrage
Abstrage is a dynamic interplay of ‘abstraction’ and ‘collage’ using the mediums of photography and painting. I have used Abstrage to represent Australian landscape icons such as Uluru, Kata Tjuta, Painted Desert, with a dual aim to transform perspective and resist the reproduction of clichés. I use a number of techniques. For example, I meld different photographs manually and/or digitally with images of my own paintings, thus creating original landscapes that reference and express, yet deconstruct iconography. In the process I explore the cross fertilisation of photography and paintings in iconic contexts to produce layered and inquisitive imagery.
Kata Tjuta 2014
In 2005 I travelled to Western Australia. I had been to the desert several times and was taken by its colours. I visited Karinjini National Park and was challenged to find a satisfying visual representation of this complex landscape, other than photography. I began with coloured and textured paper working from memory and my photographs (Karinjini Gorge)
The story
Karinjini Gorge 2005
From there the process developed to working directly with photographs. Manual deconstruction and abstraction from the subject of the photo led to several layers of reconstruction and composition. Beginning with a recognisable but altered subject, (Blue and Cold).
Blue and Cold 2006
I progressed to a further abstraction of the subject. The new images were a transformation of the photographic subject eg. a tree into another subject altogether eg a landscape (Autumn on Japanese Mountain)
Autumn on Japanes Mountain
2006