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Three Yellow Agapanthus: 18x24" Original monotype /cyanotype | Etching in Paintings by Christine So
Three Yellow Agapanthus: 18x24" Original monotype /cyanotype | Etching in Paintings by Christine So
Three Yellow Agapanthus: 18x24" Original monotype /cyanotype | Etching in Paintings by Christine So

Created and Sold by Christine So

Christine So

Three Yellow Agapanthus: 18x24" Original monotype /cyanotype - Paintings

Unavailable

Handmade

Woman Owned

Sustainable

Made In USA

Made To Order

Natural Materials

Though this resembles a block print, it is technically a kind of 19th century cameraless photography called a Cyanotype. It was made using living flowers. It is an original one-of-a-kind monotype on 100% cotton paper, signed on the back.

"Cyan" means blue in Greek and cyanotypes are normally blue and white. This cyanotype started as a blue print but was "toned" or altered in color through a soaking in sodium carbonate, a natural detergent. The darker the original blue print, the darker the yellow will be upon toning (altering the color). The unpredictable bleaching process takes an extra hour or two, and there is always a possibility of destroying the original blue print if random small spots in the original print resist changing color and remain as blue splotches on the yellow. Thus the cost is a bit higher than for my blue cyanotypes of the same size.

All my botanical cyanotypes are one-of-kind monotypes. There is no etched copper plate, no carved wood block, no printing press and no ink to be able to reproduce these images. There is no film negative either. Each is a unique, hand-printed lensless photograph made using real plants from my own garden.

Item Three Yellow Agapanthus: 18x24" Original monotype /cyanotype
Created by Christine So
As seen in Private Residence, Oakland, CA
Christine So
Meet the Creator
Wescover creator since 2023
The World Is Blue: Hand-Printed Botanical, Landscape and Abstract Cyanotypes

Christine So is a native San Franciscan painter, photographer and printmaker living across the bay in the hills of Oakland, California. Her paintings and cyanotypes have been commissioned by Starbucks, Mayo Clinic, Kimpton Hotels, Wyndham Worldmark Hotels, MD Anderson Hospital in Houston, UTMB Hospital in Galveston and purchased by private collectors in 10 countries, among them, Timothée Chalamet.

Her calm, monochromatic, nature-inspired works on paper are not printed with ink but are actually a form of photography from the 1800s. She works in the antique photographic process of cyanotypes, creating abstract and botanical monotypes in shades of blue as well as landscape photographs of the foggy woods where she lives. The plants used in her one-off prints are cut from her own garden or found in the woods nearby and printed on pure cotton watercolor paper. No two are alike. Only her landscape photographs developed using giant negatives and the same cyanotype chemicals are replicable, yet even those hand-printed photographs each differ slightly.

She paints in acrylic on canvas and prints cyanotypes on paper. Most of her works on paper are sold unframed though the display photos may depict them as framed on a virtual wall to give a sense of their size. There are some paintings listed as unframed and others as framed. Take not of the description before purchasing.