Flux # 202517

Edition: 1/3

Paul Snell is an Australian artist who blurs the boundaries between photography and painting, creating contemplative works that replace constant image saturation with moments of stillness and quiet reflection. His distinctive process begins by capturing locations or objects, then digitally "decoding" and "re-coding" the visual information, reducing and simplifying colours and forms before evolving them into new self-referential compositions. This methodology blurs the boundary between "taking" and "making" a photograph.
Inspired by 20th-century modernist artists, Snell distills form and colour to their essence, creating works with a distinctly painterly impact that critics describe as "digital painting." He converts his digital compositions into luminous Chromogenic prints using the Fujiflex system on metallic paper, mounted onto Plexiglass. Each work is produced in small editions of one to three, emphasizing their unique character.
His works are not representations of reality—they are their own realities, offering grounding experiences where beauty is found in presence rather than progress. He lives and works in Launceston, Tasmania.