PARADISE FOUND: The Art of Carol Greenan Bouyoucos
Carol Greenan Bouyoucos’ work embodies not a fall from grace, as in Milton’s, “Paradise Lost,” but a paradise found in a time of personal change and reflection, and nature as muse, no fruit forbidden.
Bouyoucos creates immersive photomontages, layering turn-of-the-century images with her lush digital representations of the natural world. With a poet’s eye, she mines her own travels as well as historic images and photographs to create environments that are both actual and fantastical. From hyper-real flowers to tropical trees dripping with moss, her montages entice viewers to linger.
"I am inspired by early American and European landscape, and botanical art, as works by Thomas Cole, Maria Sibylla Merian, and Robert John Thornton illustrate. Weaving historical imagery into the narrative embeds a feeling of nostalgia for nature, whereas working within a digital platform suggests that there is a changing truth to the environmental story. My practice has always been shaped by technology. I embrace the aesthetic tension that digital materiality imposes on the work to redefine it and offer new questions about it. Environmental and social borderlines are conflicted today, but history has taught us that contemplating nature can compel humanity to work toward change.
