Opening Reception - Friday, July 23, 6:30 - 9 pm
We're pleased to present selections from Maine artist Michelle Hauser’s ongoing series of camera-less photographic paintings. Michelle paints with light-sensitive materials such as cyanotype directly onto rag paper in a darkened room. Once completely dry the painted surface is exposed to sunlight and, in a cool bath of water, the exposure is fixed and her marks turn blue. This way of transcribing brushstrokes and achieving color exploits the variation in tone that can be achieved with different exposure times — the longer the exposure the deeper the blue. She then alters many of the blue layers by submerging the paper into toning baths, using a variety of solutions to transform the blue into a spectrum of yellows, taupes, mauves, or eggplant hues. Michelle’s idiosyncratic process builds up slowly over the course of twenty or so separate stages—sometimes introducing gum bichromate (photosensitized watercolor) into the mix. Each stage fixes her painted marks onto the paper as a unique layer that forms the final image.