Robyn Davis

Artist, Lampwork glass bead maker, Photographer

Portfolio of Handmade Photography

Born in country NSW, Robyn currently calls Port Stephens home. Along with finding ideas for work in the beautiful Port Stephens area she seeks inspiration from travels around Australia. The diversity and uniqueness of her finds is what drives her art making process. Photography allows both the ability to stage and direct her subjects while also providing a medium to capture chance images and textures. The unpredictable qualities of the handmade photograph allow a sense of play and randomness in her work that she values.

While attaining a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Newcastle she first experimented in making cyanotypes and van dykes. Robyn’s passionate interest in alternative photography continued to develop throughout her career. Her enthusiasm increased after purchasing Christina Z Anderson’s book The Experimental Photography Workbook. Inspired by this book and her personal creative studies, she began experimentation with other alternate photography processes. She experimented with making lumenprints, followed by chemigrams, often combining but not limiting herself to the two processes. Gum Bichromates, Casein and Mordencage are other processes that also feature in her work flow.

Robyn spends much of the year traveling this large country taking every opportunity to scour the bush to photograph insects, birds and Australian animals or abstract patterns in the bush and beach. At other times she will coax people she meets to model for her. She photographs them to bring out those same qualities of fun and play. These explorations enable her to share an often hidden serious side of her work. She rarely passes an opportunity to capture just one more photograph that improves on the last one.

These exciting investigations go from taking the photograph through its many levels of process, often on silver gelatin paper. Robyn enjoys the process of making and developing her work with each work an experiment in itself, unique and irreplaceable. Process is extremely important as it allows her to push the boundaries of alternate photography and mix this with traditional and mixed media processes. Robyn often works on multiple images at a time and often from different series.

Works are held in corporate and private collections in Australia, United Kingdom and the United States