The artworks can be bought. ¡You can buy them! Please enquire using jmcrook@hotmail.com. Except that:
works with a red dot on a listing page or single-item page are unavailable for purchase, usually because someone has bought the artwork
works with an orange dot are currently unavailable for purchase, but may become available in future
Pressed seaweeds, single or multiple, are unique; only one of each is ever made. lightdark prints are made in editions of 32; when all are sold no more are available. lightdark prints unlimited are made in whatever number is required to saturate the market. So:
available for purchase
The seaweed pressings – multiple pressed seaweeds and single pressed seaweeds – show a seemingly endless variety of shape, size, form, texture and colour. Individual specimens are carefully arranged and pressed on to fine art watercolour paper to fix their variety and beauty for the viewer’s pleasure and interest. The finished artworks have some of the visual appearance of formal biological reference material, but their purpose is entirely artistic: they represent an attempt to impose formality – a classical coolness – upon natural beauty. Smaller seaweeds are set out in groups which complement each other in colour and shape.
lightdark prints – lightdark prints and lightdark prints unlimited – are made by digitally scanning physical objects at high resolution, carrying out highly individual digital modifications, then printing them – again at high resolution – in light- and fade-resistant ink on paper with a coating to allow reproduction at photographic quality, a process known as giclée printing. The modifications are almost entirely to remove scanning artefacts and to improve clarity, not to misrepresent the objects; the art lies in selection and interpretation.
Giclée printing is a sort-of-fancy term for inkjet printing, implying – but not necessarily guaranteeing – high quality product with good resistance to ageing; the term is commonly used for printed matter intended as fine art. Prints shown on this site are inkjet-printed using high-quality inks and papers, have good resistance to ageing, and are intended as fine art, so it seems sensible to use the term giclée. The papers are high grade, archival grade, 250 to 300 gsm, and the inks are declared by their maker – Epson – to last for hundreds of years. If this all sounds a bit tentative, then that is how it is.