Leslie Allen Spillane is a recent graduate of MTU Crawford College of Art and Design. She works primarily in lens-based media using a variety of alternative photographic techniques and printmaking. Her interests are in environmentally sustainable photographic processes and the relationship between the human and natural world. She uses homemade plant-based chemistry to develop and print her images, exploring different plant’s properties and remedies as a metaphor for conveying psychological and emotional states.
Motherwort
I am interested in the potential and failure of photography to capture inner emotional states, and the body’s relationship with the natural world. I am currently working with the Motherwort plant to symbolize ideas of illness, healing, grief and intimacy. Working with one subject over several months to investigate how to portray emotional, mental and physical states of another person. I see the resulting pictures as a collaboration between the photographer, subject, and the plant material that allows the imagery to grow and develop. My work is a combination of analogue photography and printmaking. I am making my analogue photographic practice more sustainable by using my own plant-based chemicals to develop and handprint my photographs. Each plant contains its own unique properties that affects the development of the photographs, offering a visual language of the seasonal cycles of hibernation and growth.