Elaine Stevenson

Mt Waverly, Australia

About the Artist:
Elaine is a practising visual artist and photographer who also has a strong background in epidemiology and data manipulation. She has worked extensively in areas allied to public health, both in Australia and the UK.

Elaine's work has been exhibited in a range of locations in Melbourne including St Kilda, Abbotsford, Brunswick, Richmond and Balaclava. Her work is also included in corporate and private collections. Her unique imagery is becoming increasing well known, both within Australia and beyond and she has received expressions of interest for use of her images in a range of different projects including independent films, animation, websites. CD-covers and image projection technologies.

She has recently released a range of art cards based on her work and these are now retailed through selected galleries and related businesses throughout Melbourne, including the Monash Gallery of Art in Wheelers Hill, Victoria’s major public collector of photographic art.

Elaine has a strong philosophy of distributing benefits gained from her success with projects assisting people in need and has directed funds from sales of her work to a range of organisations including the Medical Association for Prevention of War (MAPW), the Red Cross Appeal to rebuild East Timor and Orphund, a small charity which is about to commence building a school for orphaned children in Cambodia.

Artist's Statement:
In creating this work, the camera evolves into an electronic sketch-pad, documenting lights interaction with sound, its movements to music is an essential component to the process.

My focus is upon exploring what can not be seen, the space where light and sound become one, where light responds to sound, and sound to light. Conceived as "painted light" each begins life as a photographic still, of light, captured at night in settings resonant with intense beat-driven sound-scapes.

Between lens and print, the inspiration for the finished work comes from inspiration between light and its physical surroundings. The emergent compositions reflect journeys into a plethora of disparate visual environments – above and below the oceans, from the microscopic to the panoramic, through history’s brick and mortar, and back again, to the frenetic point where light and sound merge into a cacophony of beats and bodies.