Caitlin Teal Price, a contemporary artist renowned for her distinctive approach, seamlessly blends photography and drawing to create one-of-a-kind works on paper. Her artistic process involves capturing rays of light through photography and using them as evocative backgrounds for her drawings. What sets Price apart is her unconventional method—opting for an x-acto blade instead of traditional drawing tools to meticulously scrape away the pigment of the photographic background, revealing the raw white paper beneath. This reductive drawing technique stands in contrast to the additive nature of traditional drawing.
Price herself articulates her creative philosophy: “My work delves into an exploration of spirit, the intangible essence of life intrinsically sensed more than seen. I believe that spirit reveals itself most in the routine and mundane tasks of the quotidian. It is there in the quietly predictable and expected moments of daily life where I experience the existence of spirit and magic pronounced.”
The core of Price’s innovative approach lies in her Scratch Drawings, a captivating fusion of photography and drawing. The photographic ground she employs features images of sunlight filtering through the windows of her home, with beams of light serving as a visual manifestation of the spirit inherent in the predictability of everyday life.
The drawing process itself is a reductive act, each mark delicately scraped away with precision using an x-acto blade, gradually unveiling the white paper underneath the pigment of the photographic print. The etched shapes, inspired by scenes of daily life, coupled with the laborious etched patterning, echo the repetitive nature of routine and mundane tasks. In essence, Scratch Drawings become a visual narrative that unveils the hidden enchantment within life’s ordinary moments.
Price elaborates on her technique: “Scratch Drawings unveil the hidden enchantment within life’s ordinary moments to make the ethereal tangible by connecting the spiritual and magical to the everyday.” Her unique fusion of photography and reductive drawing transforms the commonplace into the extraordinary, creating a bridge between the tangible and the intangible, the mundane and the magical.
As viewers engage with Price’s Scratch Drawings, they are invited to explore the delicate dance between the tangible and the unseen, witnessing the spirit and magic that permeate the fabric of daily existence. Caitlin Teal Price’s journey from conventional photography to the distinctive realm of Scratch Drawings exemplifies not only a shift in medium but a profound evolution in the perception of art, encouraging us to find the extraordinary in the seemingly ordinary moments of our lives.