Meet digital artist, Christine Wilkinson

Q: Hi Christine. You’re a digital photographer specialising in digital manipulation, creating truly unique and original outcomes. Could you tell us about where this line of experimentation began?

A: Some of my earliest work was made at London College of Communication with the college’s first colour photocopier. Its arrival was so exciting we queued up to use it. I copied actual soup cans rather than paper, in a kind of homage to Andy Warhol! Later I began experimenting with film and digital cameras, scanners, and photocopiers, combined with digital darkroom software and that was the beginning of the work I’m doing today.

Q: After art school, you went on to work in TV and film. Has this informed your practice in some way?

A: I worked as a lighting camerawoman on jobs as varied as a music video for The Jesus & Mary Chain, to a documentary with Buddhist nuns in Myanmar. It was in the late 80s on the BBC’s indie music series ‘Snub TV’ that we were able to experiment with the Betacam camera and see how far the BBC technical department would let us go!

Q: How would you best describe your practice?

A: My working process is iterative, each piece is influenced by the last, building on from each other through an organic process. Each image is like a new note in an ongoing piece of music. It’s very much about the process, one thing leads into another. I play with it and my job is simply to recognise an image that ‘works’, quickly save it and continue on the journey without losing the rhythm. 

For someone who often finds computers and the online world quite stressful it seems strange to have found this meditative place of calm. The practice is one of utter tranquility, it’s a zone, nothing else exists for a while.

Q: What are the main sources of motivation for your work?

A: My motivation is to constantly explore the process and have fun with it. The abstract photography work began in 2006 with photographs of car headlights taken from the top of a No. 4 bus one rainy night in North London. Taking off my wet, steamy glasses I was transported into this glorious kaleidoscopic myopic world of swirling colours and light. It was the most fun I’d had all day and I wanted to find a way to share the experience.

‘That which takes us by surprise – moments of happiness – that is inspiration.’ –

Agnes Martin

Q: Do you work from digital photography exclusively, or do you still shoot in analogue? And how does the subject of your source image inform the final outcome?

A: I rarely take photographs these days. I have a set of analogue photographs which I took early on and have used ever since. I liken them to a kind of sourdough starter. I’ll leave them for a year or two coming back to them and taking them in a different direction. Eventually the original image isn’t important… you’re left with a bunch of pixels to play around with. In the process I’m looking for something so subtle, so delicate you could float through it, yet tangible enough to keep a hold.

Q: You’ve just released a series of limited fine art prints with K&M. Could you share the themes behind this collection?

A: The Botanicals series are an homage to my parents and grandparents who ran a flower and garden shop in the 1950s to 1970s. I grew up in the flat above the shop. In the evening when the shop was shut I would go downstairs and dance amongst the flowers. It was a magical place for a child growing up in a grey post war Britain… a shop full of colours and scents!