Artist research; Matt Collishaw

 Insecticide, 2009

"These moths and butterflies were squashed onto small sheets of glass and scanned with a regular desktop scanner, and after 100 scans a potentially interesting figure would emerge. This figure would then be played with on Photoshop for several weeks until its full character emerged; at a certain point the image reached a stage where it was totally independent of me, and existed as its own creature. I then printed the digital file on C-type paper at 180 x 180cm.

"The final pictures resemble memento mori photography, keepsakes made to preserve images of the dead. They are literally representations of the thee-dimensional world extinguished onto a two-dimensional plane. Although the insects are very small and insignificant in scale, scanned at high resolution and printed on a large scale they become infinitely detailed, sometimes resembling clusters of star constellations or distant galaxies."

"Insecticide" Matt Collishaw

"Insecticide" Matt Collishaw

  These images are incredible, using real insects and scanning and building up layers, its beyond my IT skills. It does, however bring to mind the scan of my dragonfly and it brought up some great details and colours.

I love the rich, deep colours he captures in these images remind me of a oil painting

My scan of dragonfly