Visual Arts: Catherine Nelson

Other Worlds

Catherine Nelson

 
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Catherine Nelson is the brilliant creator of “Other Worlds,” a series of epic, re-imagined landscapes.

For many years, she designed visual effects for feature films such as “Moulin Rouge” and “Harry Potter.” Now she uses her technical skills to weave photographs into grand works of art.

Borne of her imagination, yet sourced from the natural world, each piece is composed of hundreds of digital photos, shot by Nelson. “Other Worlds” features images from China, Italy, Belgium, the USA, and Australia. However, unlike a traditional photographer, she uses these images as material, not product. As she explains, “When I embraced the medium of photography, I felt that taking a picture that represented only what was within the frame of the lens wasn’t expressing my … experience of the world.” More like a painter wielding a camera, her concern is interpreting the landscape, rather than capturing it at a particular moment in time.

Each piece takes approximately a month to complete. After shooting for hours on location, she sifts through images and melds them with as little painting as possible. Because each is so meticulously detailed and expansive, a viewer can visually explore these landscapes, remarking their features, as if an authentic vista were before her or his eyes. Though each work is composed of elements of a particular place on planet Earth, deconstructed and then re-imagined, these “Other Worlds” are distinctly Nelson’s.
 

Catherine Nelson was trained as a painter in Sydney and London. Her latest work has been exhibited in Australia, New Zealand, China, Korea, the USA, and Europe.