The Surreally Whimsical World of Shae DeTar

Shae DeTar creates otherworldly photographic mixed media images, using a unique hand-painting process in which she paints on top of her photographs. Shae DeTar's surrealistic images merges photography and painting by exaggerating the colors of both the landscapes and her subjects and taking them out of reality and placing them into Another World.

USA – 

Colourful, quirky, antiquated and yet modern is what comes to mind when you see model-turned-artist Shae Acopian Detar’s work. The artist who divides time between New York City and Los Angeles, creates images using age-old technique of hand painting her photographs. Her handiwork lends the paintings a dreamy, transcendental quality.

Neon pinks, yellows and greens are some of the defining colours in Detar’s images. The play with contrast creates a wonderland in which female models look like otherworldly goddesses. The choice of theatrical wardrobes, or lack thereof, reflect Detar’s acquired taste as a model. She transforms clear blue skies, lake waters, and mountains into reveries.

Detar’s fine art photography took off when she first started taking self-portraits. In one such experiment, she “heavily” painted herself with “lace shadows” on her face, tinted her body blue and painted yellow flowers all over. Detar has often defined her work as a “pre-Raphaelite dream” (the 19th century artistic movement that revived interest in the classic and Renaissance art forms).

In one of her interviews, the artist said, “I suppose I am creating a world I wish I lived in, I am trying to create a moment that is far more enticing that the one directly in front of me.”


Art & Culture Feature- Written by Manmeet Sahni

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