Deco mag Spring '17 issue

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artist: allan forsyth Right: Winter Sleep, flowers from the freezer Below, from left: Hypos, 3D motion lenticular; Wild Heart; Aqua Flora I Floral music Photographic artist Allan Forsyth says he likes to offer a new perspective on familiar subjects. That’s something of an understatement - his images of flowers are truly fantastic. Text: Hari Alexander The camera, not the paintbrush, is artist Allan Forsyth’s tool of choice. It allows him to capture reality and place it in a new dimension - and this is particularly true of his floral works. An Allan Forsyth flower is definitely not something you look at and think ‘oh that’s pretty‘ and move on. His flowers draw you back to stand and stare. They’re lusciously rich in colour and intensity, often presented on a black background and you feel almost as if you’re taking a tour of the subject’s interior as well as marvelling at the exquisite beauty of its exterior. London-based Forsyth, who hails from the Scottish Highlands, has a background in the technical side of photography, working in retouching and the computer elements of modern image production. ‘I didn’t go to art school and have been a photographic artist, which is how I describe myself, for the past 12 years. I suppose I got inspired by the early days of Photoshop - but these days everyone’s making digital imagery and I think it’s become too gimmicky, too clever possibly.’ Forsyth’s work encompasses abstract designs and what you could term contemporary still life and it’s marrying his subjects with different techniques that makes it so arresting: analogue and digital exposures sit with computer generated imagery, photograms and photographic collages from historic magazines and vintage postcards. Forsyth’s work conveys his love of the drama of nature and returning to those flowers, well, it’s mpossible not to be fascinated by them. Flowers are a universal subject for artists, and have been for centuries for the obvious reason that they’re beautiful. ‘And for me, the image of a flower is so classical that it could be boring,’ says Forsyth. ‘So what I try to do is to make it different by adding a touch of the surreal to the still life. ‘I do love parrot tulips and I’ll dissect them with a scalpel so you can see insdie the flower and have a deeper perspective. I am true ot the colours of the flowers but I make them more saturated.’ Forsyth’s latest works with them in water and freezing them. ‘I don’t think of myself as an experimental artist, but I look for different ideas. Putting flowers in water or freezing them can produce more abstract images, though you can still see that they’re flowers, I’m not masking what they are.’ Forsyth’s work captures the drama of nature Deco mag 14
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Deco mag Spring '17 issue

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