Mary Claire Becker
Mary Claire Becker
My Mosaic Virus series uses a combination of digital and traditional printmaking techniques to alter and distort images taken from 17th century Dutch Golden Age still life paintings of Semper Augustus tulips. During the Dutch Tulip Mania financial bubble, Semper Augustus tulips were prized because of their variegated stripes, yet the stripes were in fact a side effect of a mosaic virus that weakened the bulb and hindered the plant’s propagation, rendering them a poor investment. The print Mosaic Virus IV erodes the image of a painting in an echo of the mosaic virus’ degradation of its host. The resulting distortion serves as a reflection upon the persistent appeal of bucolic nature imagery amidst the 21st century shift from physical media to digital media in industrialized society. Climate change due to industrial resource use has altered our relationship to our environment, and the emergence of the digital has altered our relationship to physical objects. The Mosaic Virus series represents a reflection on the shift from the physical pastoral to the digital pastoral, with its increasingly more tenuous relationship to the original ecological phenomena it references