Josie McCoy

Dorothy Vallens
Photoplate: Digitally Manipulated Film Positives
5 Runs
600mm x 600mm
2006

This lithograph depicts Dorothy Vallens, a character in Blue Velvet. It is part of a series of lithographs and paintings inspired by the idea of the ‘American Dream’ and the inevitable darker subtext that is present in any paradise.

For the purpose of my current work I took the notion of paradise as it is depicted in American films and television programmes. The ‘picket fence American Dream’ we see in Desperate Housewives and American Beauty. My interest is primarily about things happening under the surface or behind closed doors, which disrupt the order of the apparent normality.

To make the lithograph, I used a high resolution scan of a photograph from the television screen as my starting point. Then using Photoshop and a graphics tablet and pen, I made a film for each colour by erasing the areas of the photograph which were superfluous and drawing in the areas I wanted to emphasise. I then began to reconstruct the image using these separate, pared down parts of the face, each layer responding to the previous one until the image re-emerged.

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