Daryl Thetford

The use of color and texture in my work differs from many artists who are involved with a digital process. Instead of using color or texture filters, I use actual photographs that I shoot to create compositions.

My photographs focus on people who are posed in various positions, along with mannequins, signs, train cars, graffiti, urban walls, newspaper boxes, cracks in wooden walls, metal, worn and weathered painted walls, as well as old maps, and other Americana ephemera that I find on my travels. Close-up shots are usually done with a tripod and cable release for quality and clarity.

The colors in all of my photographs originate from my subjects. Numbers and rust often derive from train cars; letters and words come from signs and graffiti; and torn paper and pieces of posters are from urban poster walls.

After developing the images from raw digital files, I change a specific image to black-and- white. Thus begins a process of cut and paste that I have developed, using multiple images of close-ups of paint, followed by photographs of signs. Many other photos are added and overlapped.  Although I have used as few as 50 images to create an artwork, more often 200 or more photographs are used in this process.