Liza Dracup

For my final artist, I found Liza Dracup, a contemporary artist living and working in the North of England. She focuses her photography on the landscapes of the British Isles. The line of work she has currently done is a series of images called Sharpe's Wood. I was immediately fascinated by the color that she captured within each of the images. I then went on to read her profile information and learned that she uses film and vintage medium format camera at night with natural and artificial light and was intrigued that the images weren’t set up. At first they seemed like studio lighting and sets were used, but the sources of light she did use were from “constant waxing and waning of the moon, transient car headlamps and the glow of streetlights”. The images have a painterly quality to each of them, almost as if she used oil to enhance the colors. I also thought the depth of field she created in many of the prints were interesting and gave the image a sort of expressionist movement. The picture I was immediately drawn to is the one presented below. The composition and color are enticing, giving this magical, enchanting feeling about the woods the photographer is entering. It makes the viewer want to keep going but also creates this ominous feeling with the way she creates this warmth in the foreground of the image and cool, dark feeling in the background. She created her images during the period of sun set and sunrise, and she captures that great brilliance of color the sun creates when rising/setting. Her color is vibrant use of color illuminates the bushes and trees surrounding the main focus, which is the path. She even has a use of complementary colors of the bright blue sky and orange bushes which vibrate off of each other. This was the first piece I saw, but after looking through the rest, I found that although they are all on the same subject, they are entirely different from each other and are extremely interesting to look at.

Here is her link: http://www.lizadracup.co.uk/profile.htm