ABOUT KATHA
About Katha Wood
Katha Wood is a British fine art and photographic artist, known for her innovative approach to visual storytelling. Currently based in North Norfolk, she also maintains ties with London, where she frequently works. Wood's creative journey began in the scenic region of Andalucia, Spain, which deeply influenced her debut collection, The Bigger Picture. This collection, spanning 2020 to 2023, mainly showcases landscapes, skies, and wildlife printed on brushed aluminium, creating a unique interplay of light and texture. Her work often focuses on capturing natural beauty, with a slightly surreal and otherworldly touch, reflecting her personal experiences during challenging times.
Additionally, Katha Wood is a qualified Solution Focused Hypnotherapist, which influences the therapeutic and uplifting nature of her art. Her choice of brushed aluminium as a medium helps her images to reflect light in dynamic ways, giving them a three-dimensional, living quality.
Katha's mastery with her art lies in removing the mundane from her photographic canvas, allowing the metal to shine through, creating an unparalleled play of light and depth. Silk-like textures and captivating reflections oscillate throughout the day, ensuring each piece is a living entity, catching your eye with its unique character. Her work, bold, creative, and delightfully unconventional, invites you to experience art in a new light—one that transforms not just spaces but emotions. Welcome to Katha's world, where art is not just observed but felt.
Words from Katha...
During the unusual times that we all faced in 2020 and 2021 and since, I, like many, struggled! There were moments during that time, feeling cut-off and isolated, particularly from my family, not being able to engage in normal life, feeling heavily controlled in every direction, which were unbearable for me, as for many.
I escaped to my camera and found myself developing my joy of capturing my surroundings, the landscape and natural life and wildlife. I started to develop my creativity with my images in the digital darkroom. Creating something slightly other worldly started to give me a lot of pleasure. It transported me, provided huge relief, escapism perhaps. It lifted my spirits. Capturing nature, the sky, the clouds, the long horizon, birds soaring freely above me. Adapting these images to create something a little surreal gave me joy, relief and now my passion for my art continues. I found the medium of brushed aluminium. I wanted to print on something more 3 dimensional than just paper. I do print on Hahnemühle textured fine art paper at times too, which I also love, but I discovered brushed aluminium and this gave me real joy. The light reflecting qualities giving me the most joy! We print directly onto the brushed aluminium and the white areas in my images are removed, leaving bare metal and the sheen of the metal underneath to shine through. These pictures shine in all sorts of different lights. They come alive at different times of the day and night, depending on where the light source is coming from at that time. Different parts of the pictures come alive and go to sleep and feel depending on the ambient light and this brings character and life into your space.
I hope my photographic art will resonate with you and inspire you. I hope you too will experience the joy, relief and inspiration that it gives to me.
My mission is to bring as much of my uplifting, light reflecting art to as many people in the world as possible, to bring that light into your lives too.
WHAT IS FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY?
Fine Art Photography is a distinguished form of visual expression that transcends the mere documentation of subjects. It is a creative and deliberate approach to photography, where the artist employs technical mastery, thoughtful composition, and a unique artistic vision to capture images that evoke emotion, provoke contemplation, and elicit a profound aesthetic experience. In the realm of Fine Art Photography, each photograph is a carefully crafted work of art, imbued with the photographer's personal perspective and a commitment to elevating the medium beyond mere representation, transforming it into a conduit for artistic expression and storytelling.
The artist uses the camera as the tool to create the work of art. The camera is used to make an art piece that reveals the vision of the artist and makes a statement of that vision, rather than documenting the subject before the lens.
MY PROCESS
I generally capture my images using either my Sony or Hasselblad cameras. I adapt and edit the images in the 'digital darkroom' and when I am happy with the image, it sings to me! I then move into the sampling stage. I sample the artwork on a small square of brushed aluminium, working with the laboratory that prints my images. Until I am happy with the printed result, I keep correcting the image in the digital darkroom and resampling it.
I am currently printing most of my work on brushed aluminium. It has been a long iterative process getting to the point of choosing to print on this medium. I was looking for something with more depth than paper. I wanted to find a medium that would respond well to light - I found something that attracts light - that could be hung without the use of glass in front of it, to get away from problems with reflections, and which would give my work real depth.
One of the beauties of working with this medium, is that the whites and brights in the digital file are removed, enabling all of those areas of the image to expose the metal it is printed on. This creates extraordinary light reflecting elements in and across the piece. Furthermore, the texture of the brushed aluminium has a direction of travel, and this means that - depending on where you are standing in relation to the piece of art - or where the light is coming from at that particular time of day, in a natural light setting, the picture displays different qualities to the observer. The piece almost comes alive: changing throughout the day and into the evening and in relation to your position to it. This brings a unique and characterful piece of art into your life.
My brushed aluminium pictures are printed and produced in one of the most advanced printing laboratories in the world. The aluminium is presented as a dibond (a sturdy composite material consisting of two aluminium panels and a black polyethylene core). This three-layer material is just 3 mm thick and low in weight. The print is cured with ultraviolet light, protecting it from light damage, dust particles, and moisture. My artwork is printed directly onto the surface of the metal, using UV Fine Art pigments.
Katha Wood, July 2023, London
