MaloneyGallery.com
Title
The Maloney Gallery of digital prints -- stop and smell the flowers
Description
John Maloney grew up in West Los Angeles and, although he briefly studied at the Art Institute and at Chinouard School of Art as a teen-ager, he is largely self-taught as a painter and photographer. After graduating from St. Mary's College in Moraga, Calif., he settled in the San Francisco Bay Area and worked at the Oakland Tribune, as an English teacher in San Francisco and in public relations. He has also been editor of two national magazines (American Collector and Antiques USA). He now lives in Martinez, Calif., and works as a journalist in Walnut Creek, Calif.
His photography has been featured in Horticulture Magazine, Nevada Magazine, American Collector and other publications, and his paintings have been exhibited in galleries in Orinda and Walnut Creek. Maloney has specialized in flower photography for nearly 20 years.
"While copying some 35-millimeter color slides with his camera, John Maloney whimsically popped a stray leaf into his duplicator to see what it would look like. Soon he was experimenting with whole flowers, petals, leaves, tendrils, whatever was small enough to sandwich between the two layers of glass in his slide duplicator. When he aimed his camera at the sun and took a picture, the film recorded a 1:1 image of the light passing through whatever the sandwich contained. "...Such advancements in technique often bring with them new aesthetic possibilities -- here, a fresh mix of form and color. "For several years now Maloney has been accumulating photographs of sandwiched plants. His equipmetn is still an inexpensive screw-on slide duplicator and a diffuser, his light source the sun. What has emerged is a highly personal collection of anonymous photographs. No records exist of what went into these pictures of where they were taken, though Maloney says they are all California plants, some gathered from his garden, some picked up on is walks in the hills. ... There is no way to determine before you try it how a leaf or petal will look in the viewfinder. Such are the uncertainties and rewards of experimental photography."
