Kate Ballis
As an artist whose interest lies in the unseen, Kate Ballis uses infrared technology to reveal wavelengths of light that exist beyond the limits of ordinary human vision. This pursuit has taken her from the rolling hills of the Scottish Highlands and craggy shorelines of the Greek Isles to the expansive desert landscapes of Chile and the United States. More recently, Ballis has turned her attention to the intimate world of botanical life. Drawing on the decorative language of 18th-century English Jasperware, the series brings together historical ideas of beauty and ornamentation with unseen frequencies of light and contemporary digital image-making technologies. Working with a full-spectrum camera under artificial infrared light, Ballis employs meticulous focus-stacking techniques to construct each image from more than 100 individual exposures. The resulting artworks are further transformed through hand-applied mixed media painting, creating richly layered works that hover between photography and painting, the historical and the contemporary, and the natural and the imagined.
Artworks
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