Janelle Young

Capturing the Infinity of the Sea or Field (Cozen), 2014

Capturing the Infinity of the Sea or Field (Cozen) was influenced by a book, A New Method of Assisting the Invention in Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape, written in the mid 1700s by the artist Alexander Cozens. In the book, Cozens instructs amateur artists to begin a painting or drawing by first creating an arbitrary inkblot to allow for a more natural and creative landscape. My process is similar, though I utilize developer instead of ink and work on photographic paper. Utilizing multiple developer solutions, I put small amounts of it onto a pre-exposed piece of paper, folding it in half to create a symmetrical, ambiguous atmosphere. Though this process ultimately is left up to chance, there is a surprisingly great deal of control that can be exerted, allowing each inkblot to be a conversation between happenstance and the will of the artist.