Pam Rouleau

Artist Statement

The Uninhibited series was created with cyanotype solution (an historical photographic process), watercolor paper, and natural elements that altered the coated papers. Coating numerous sheets
of paper, allowing them to dry overnight and carefully rolling them up, I
took to the frigid morning temperatures on hikes through deep, freshly fallen snow as well as on dry, windy days. Choosing where I might place each sheet based on the direction of the wind or precipitation,
UV light transformed the yellow of the cyanotype solution into various
blue shapes. Some sheets, I rotated, while others sat allowing the transformation to be less active. I inserted sections of some of the coated sheets into crevices on hillsides turning those coatings into
varying blues and yellows, while others were hung with nails or pins, leaving rust marks where those tools had been. Some sheets lay in tree canopies, held down only by one or two edges so a soft breeze
might gently move them around. In some cases, the clean linevbetween image and frame were interrupted by drip marks and
splashes, while others are “framed off” by covering a border of the paper, only to be exposed during a second coating and additional exposure time.
These cyanotypes are stories of time evolved in the outdoor elements
just as I evolved after a medical diagnosis that gave me a further appreciation of life. Credit also goes to the predecessors of cyanotype work, one of whom turned me on to the process, altogether, where I
create my own ‘stories’ and one who made me see I could allow nature to be the guiding force.