Tool Dilemma

In 2017-18, in my second year at the School of Photographic Arts Ottawa, I did a project on artisans. I was very interested in offering viewers a glimpse into the processes of various types of artists. One of my artisans was Alison Fowler, an Ottawa-based painter who has an abiding love of nature and gardening. A “colourist,” she uses a palette knife and brushwork to create design elements in a natural setting to explore the artistic realm between abstraction and reality. When I visited her studio, I became quite fascinated with her work bench and in particular, her palette knives. I borrowed nine of her many knives and photographed them in a controlled studio setting. The only artifice was that Alison put a small amount of paint on the blade to give the impression that the knife was about to be used. However, it was only when I was doing post-production on the images did I realize what I had. The history of each knife was evident in the paint residue left from past uses so for me, these knives came alive. Photographing them against a black backdrop gave them depth that further enhanced their uniqueness.