PAINTING OR PHOTOGRAPHY by CHRISTINE LAVANCHY

Why should I choose, especially, that both disciplines allow us to make images. As a painter, and as an “images maker”, I have naturally “met” photography on my way, and this has been the starting point of a huge amount of experimentations.

In my painting, I had already passed the stage of using a brush; I tried variety of approaches and tested many household tools. On discovering digital photography, I have explored many image processing software. I have been fascinated with the possibilities offered by working with layers. But as a painter, staying behind a computer was frustrating in a way.

Since I familiarized myself with all the digital printing processes’ capabilities, I realized that it offers fantastic new perspectives. I started to mix both disciplines, on the same surface; for example, treating a piece of wood with acrylics and marble treatment, and then printing a photograph directly onto it! This is what I call hybrid photographs. Nothing pleases me more than when somebody asks me if this is a painted artwork or photography!   “Both” I answer. In fact, I don’t think that the medium is so important, but the language!

Using that approach, I’m now working on a big project that I have called LE MUR, the wall, in which I have decided to produce 100 artworks, paintings, photographs and hybrids. The final step will be to create a large format exhibition; the size of it will depend on how much I can invest.

This is my way of sharing emotions offered continuously by Mother Nature. When combining the pieces together, I search for the primitive energy, the one that nature provides when one contemplates. Furthermore and to my surprise, with these new arrangement and combinations of artworks, I have discovered an independent energy – that was something I was not expected! Now I don’t even have to think if what I create is a painting or a photograph.

So yes, really, why should I choose?

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Christine Lavanchy is a self taught artist, painter and photograph, living and working in Switzerland. She has been fascinated by nature and almost all her work reflects this fascination.

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