Jon Lybrook - Techniques in Art

My work combines painting, darkroom techniques, and traditional printmaking to create organic patterns and images on photographic film. It starts with a photograph created without a camera. The images are composed through a controlled process of delivering concentrated photochemicals directly to film emulsion, allowing chaotically derived patterns to occur. My artistic focus has been creating natural-looking art without computer-generated mathematics and without copying directly from nature. It is a process much like Zen Painting, which relies on being present and acting in the moment; Zen Painting is a traditional Japanese method of painting where there is no pre-planning put into the work with an emphasis on it being free, effortless, and natural.

The "chemigram" images in my work are created by painting on silver gelatin film with ordinary photo chemicals, such as developer, fixer, and bleach. It reduces the elements of photography to it's most rudementary processes and creates extrordinary graphical forms. My technique has evolved over many years and is derived from standard photographic processes to evoke dynamic, abstract images without the use of a camera or even a darkroom. I began working with this technique as the result of experiments painting on motion picture film in the style of avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage. These experiments, and drawing from the rich history of experimental photographers and filmmakers, eventually gave way to the still images that have become central to the work I have been engaged with since 1992.

I do not use paint, dyes, or acid based toners in my work. Once the chemigram element of a piece has been established by applying photo chemicals to the film in various ways, I then scan and layer the image digitally, often incorporating realistic images I capture with a scanner or digital camera.

The piece then goes through various stages of proofing. Once a proof has been finalized, prints are then made using photogravure, inkjet or lightjet techologies, each of which have different qualities. LightJet prints use red, blue, and green lasers to create the image digitally, while inkjet prints tend to look softer and can be printed on a greater variety of paper. Photogravure printmaking involves a more labor-intensive process which involves creating a black and white transparency, which is then transferred to a polymer plate. The plate is then hand-wiped with oil-based inks and transferred to archival paper using a traditional printing press.