Carolyn Cheng

Carolyn Cheng re-examines traditional elements of landscape photography from an abstract aerial perspective by transforming water, sand and earth, to investigate aspects of the feminine sublime in the natural world. By using the landscape as a medium rather than a subject, she endeavours to engage the viewer with the painterly shapes, lyrical patterns and the vibrant colours of the landscape that are unimaginable from the ground. 

Whereas historical representations of the Sublime depicted scenes of nature inspiring fear or eliciting domination over the landscape, Cheng’s images differ by using abstraction to remove all sense of scale and dominion.  While exploring nature’s ephemeral and fantastical phenomena, she portrays the landscape with a kind of intimacy created by abstraction, possible from an immense distance when seeing the land from the sky.  Her images focus more intently on the dynamic and transmutable nature of the landscape depicting it in a fashion that is more approachable, cyclical and alive.  The viewer is thus connected to the landscape through an affective response to its beauty, as ordinary terrestrial elements become elevated to the otherworldly.

See more of Carolyn’s work on her personal website www.carolyncheng.com