Nadia Attura is an artist I have looked at during my research for my current Masters project. I first came across her work when looking into artists that captured landscapes more familiar to those that I see every day as lot of the landscape photographers and artists of other mediums I look up to and have researched have captured and been inspired by visuals that are so much different to those that I see and am inspired by. Not all of her works are based on or involve British landscapes, but just knowing she comes from a place where she was surrounded by these British landscapes growing up has made me feel a lot more connected to her work than I perhaps otherwise would.
Attura is a British photographer and printmaker who creates layered pieces of art that capture a sense of time and place. It is this layering that caught my eye first and foremost. Layering is something that I am always drawn to in my own work, from my more abstract painting projects I embarked on in the first two years of my undergraduate degree, to the multiple exposures both in camera and in the darkroom that feature heavily in not only my final year undergraduate photography work but also in my personal projects outside of any educational endeavors. She uses primarily medium format film images overlaid with digital paint-like marks and processes to create a surreal atmosphere to her work. This surrealist tone combined with the botanical motifs come together to enhance and display the beauty and idealism that sit at the heart of her work.
Skaftafell, Nadia Attura. Mixed Media printed on Giclee Fine Art Cotton 308gsm. Various sizes available.
Experimenting with mixed media, specifically paint and film photography, is something that has been playing on my mind for a number of years now. It is something that can be seen within my project sketchbooks and once again is being considered for my current project. Nadia's work was paramount in bringing that form of layering to the forefront of my mind again within this project and it is definitely something I wish to experiment with in the near future. When doing so I will be looking back and referencing Nadia's work, to see the methods in which she utilizes her digital brush strokes to create certain atmospheres and moods within her pieces, and to see how I can translate and build upon her techniques when creating my own analogue layering of mediums to fit my project concept.
Montain Rain, Nadia Attura. Mixed Media printed on Giclee Fine Art Cotton 308gsm. Various sizes available.
Attura often uses this layering as a form of transformation, as can be seen by this quote of hers;
"I am introducing layers and textures and working digitally so that you can hardly tell it's a photograph." - Nadia Attura
The image above showcases this layering perfectly. Without the caption or prior knowledge that this image is of a photographical nature, it would be incredibly easy to assume it is a traditional painting. Her work takes one form of art, one kind of medium, and using others transforms it into something it didn't entirely start as. It adds aspects to the image that weren't there to begin with and almost, but not quite, takes away any immediate notion of the original form of the work. Whereas my own reasoning for this layering I wish to embark on, other than an aesthetic pleasure, is less transformative and more revealing through obscuring. By covering up parts of the work piece by piece, it will reveal more and more about myself and my whole project concept. It will hopefully create not a beautiful and idealistic atmosphere as it does in Attura's work, but a moody, melancholic, and somewhat eerie one. Regardless of the intention behind layering, I feel it is an invaluable tool in provoking thought and inspiring intrigue within the viewers of particular artworks, and seeing Nadia's work and how successfully she has employed this technique has certainly inspired me to experiment with it once again.
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