2024 Sitka Artist Residency: Chris Lael Larson
Cascades
New Work from the Sitka Artist Residency
Nov 7 - 30, 2024
In the series Cascades, Chris Lael Larson blends painting, photography, and assemblage to create new perceptual experiences of the Cascade Head Preserve on the northwest coast of the US. The images combine a Fauvist rendering style with saturated colors and natural objects from the landscape. In this series, he photographs the natural area, makes large-format prints of the images, and attaches groups of prints to large canvases. He then paints over the photos on the canvas, blending them into a new landscape image that combines the gestural language of painting along with photographic elements. Lastly, he adds natural elements from the area — branches, leaves, dirt, rocks, mosses — to create a temporary in-studio installation that is finally photographed to create the final image.
Chris Lael Larson blends photography, painting, and assemblage to create colorful, confounding viewing experiences. His work is about giving common materials new life, meaning, and value through a process that often feeds back on itself. In his work, he constructs temporary altar-like installations using photographs, paint, found objects, and natural elements that he photographs using a hyperreal lighting style. The resulting photographs are then painted upon and integrated into installations that reincorporate the original source materials. With his blend of expressive mark-making, and photographic rendering of depth, his work has been described as an immersive hyperreal abstract painting.
About the Sitka Residency
The Blue Sky/Sitka Center Photography Residency was created to increase Sitka’s visibility in the photography community through a collaboration with Blue Sky Gallery, one of the most well-known photography galleries in the Pacific Northwest. Each year, Sitka offers 2 alumni of Blue Sky’s exhibitions and Drawers program the opportunity to be in residence at Sitka Center for up to a month. Residents are selected through a jury of Sitka Center and Blue Sky staff, along with a Blue Sky Residency alum.