Shelley Lawrence Kirkwood

My work is driven by a deep curiosity about the sentience of plants—their ability to communicate, feel, and exist in ways we may not yet fully understand. In this series, I use anthotype as the foundational process to produce these images. The process uses extracted flower pigments as an emulsion base to expose images over long periods of time. The anthotypes are then scanned and altered both in the computer and with some drawing to produce the final giclee prints. .

I think of this collection as a series of portraits. By using flower pigments to render floral portraits I am able to create an interconnected loop. These images evoke a sense of presence. Plants, like us, hold histories, stories, and perhaps even a form of consciousness.

There is a spiritual dimension to this work—an awareness that I am a human in a more-than-human world. The ephemeral nature of anthotype and ghostly, diaphenous quality of the final images speaks to memory, impermanence and transformation, offering a distilled awareness that we are but a miniscule part of a great living system, always in flux.

Tulip, beet emulsion

Anthotype to giclée print

16 x 20”

2024