In Chloe Sells’s kaleidoscopic works, landscape photography clashes with abstract painting and traditional printmaking techniques to create vivid artworks. Informed by extensive travel and residence in countries foreign to her, Sells uses the features of landscape and nature to explore questions of how the human experience is shaped by its distinct surroundings. In her work there is play between the immutable and the supple which Sells skilfully embroiders so that image and imagination become entangled.

Playfully blending a combination of visual practices, she sometimes employs the alchemy of the darkroom by integrating unorthodox colours and textures into her photographs. In other pieces she draws or paints directly onto the print or uses the Japanese Suminagashi marbeling style to integrate fine lines and patterning, which, in their delicacy, create new contours around the fauna of the places she explores. Image fragments and oddly cut prints physically alter how space is considered, breaking free from the rectangular limitations of conventional artworks. There is a commitment to beauty and wonder in her outcomes. Beyond the layers of technique, Sells asks the viewer to engage in a metaphysical discussion linking geography, history and belonging. Through the one-of-a-kind artworks a treaty has been formed that looks like a baby born of Hilma af Klint, Tadanori Yokoo and Sam Gilliam—a child of a riotous union. Within Sells’s landscapes there are tales of African savannahs with rough hued over-paintings akin to the works of Peter Beard. Snow-capped mountain ranges laced with psychedelic marbling techniques give the viewer a birds-eye view of the landscape as we know it, while the mark-making conjures the energy that lies deep within the land itself.

Sells was born in Aspen, Colorado in 1976 and began photographing in 1993. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design andreceived a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography, then completed her Masters in Fine Art at Central St. Martins in London. Her work has been exhibited in multiple solo and group exhibitions internationally. She has published three acclaimed books, SWAMP (2016), Flamingo (2017) and Hot Damn! (2022).