After many years of working in pastels and mixed media, I decided to explore how to create my own digital prints or giclees of my work in my studio, rather than entrusting this process to a professional lab. I did not like the quality of the mass-produced digital prints that I was seeing, and producing my own prints would allow me to have creative control over all aspects of the process-the photography, proofing and choice of paper.
I also enjoyed being able to creatively experiment with variations on original works.

After much trial and error, I found the professional printer, archival inks and heavy gauge fine art paper that resulted in the quality of print I was seeking. If you would like to read more about my printmaking please see blogpost "Digital Fine Art Prints (Giclees)" on http://ellenquestel.com/blog/

I have recently decided to offer my prints for sale on Etsy. Each print is signed, numbered and produced in a limited edition. The notion of numbered editions is actually a hold-over from traditional printmaking, where the number of impressions and their order in the edition can result in individual print differences. This of course is not the case with digital prints, where each image is identical to the next but I have kept this tradition as I would like the owner of my print to know that there is a set limit to the number of them available and that it has been produced with great care in contrast to many mass produced items.

The originals from which the prints are made are pastels and mixed media:

My pastels have two main sources of inspiration: the shifting beauty of the natural landscape and the sensuous lure of the pastels themselves. Although I love to paint the landscape and am inspired by nature, I am not primarily interested in naturalism, but rather in representing what has moved me about a particular scene and exploring how to translate this feeling into line and color. Soft pastels are ideally suited for my purposes: the crystalline structure of the pure pigments reflect and refract the light, resulting in a luminosity and richness of color.

Mixed media gives me the opportunity to experiment with new combinations of materials and allow these materials freedom to take shape as they will. These works tend to be more abstract and symbolic, the subject matter referring to psyche's inner landscape inspired by such archetypal themes as spirit in nature, microcosms, stages of differentiation and transformation in nature, and cycles of birth, death, and rebirth. The prints offered in my shop are made from mixed media originals.

If you would like to learn about my work, please visit my website http://ellenquestel.com