About the Method

This image is of my current unfinished project. The yellow orange rectangle was painted with acrylics on paper and later scanned. The red piece was painted, scanned, and then superimposed on the orange piece in Photoshop. Colors were tweaked a bit; these didn’t need much, and then the black areas, which are illustrations of French ironwork, were added to the mix. I move the blacks around to find the best placement, erasing parts and turning and repeating and enlarging, and flipping. I am, in effect, making a painting. This is a collage operation, far more malleable than anything I can do in the studio with the same materials pre-scanning. How often have I wished that a strip of painted paper were just a little bigger or a little greener or darker? Here I have the sorcery.

These giclées I make are not reproductions. There is no original. I don’t number them because there are very few that are alike. And there is no plate of metal or wood or stone or silk to print from that will deteriorate with use. I need to find a different name for them. Any suggestions?

Georgia O’Keeffe: I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way — things I had no words for.

For information about any of the paintings on this site, please email Joan