Loretta Young-Gautier

Loretta Young-Gautier meticulously crafts her images, spending weeks, often incorporating as many as 10 different negatives to create a single work of art.  She often integrates Western elements into her artistic vision, producing eloquent black & white photographs that transport the viewer into a surreal, yet recognizable, world.

Each photograph is produced as a limited edition of no more than 50 archival silver gelatin or pigment inkjet prints available in two sizes of 25 each. A signed, proof-size pigment print of select images is also available in an open edition.

Former Associate Director of Denver's venerated Camera Obscura Gallery, Ms. Young-Gautier’s career also includes exhibitions in numerous solo and group shows, including the Coors Western Art Show at the National Western Stock Show; the San Diego Natural History Museum;   Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, and Byers-Evans House Museum, as well as galleries in Denver, Aspen, New York and Oklahoma City. Private, corporate and museum collections nationwide host her photographs, including Great West Life, Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Western History Department of the Denver Public Library. 

Loretta's work appears in Photo Review, Icon, Masterpiece Magazine, The Photographers Market, 303 Magazine, Passion Press, and her image, Gothic,  appeared on the cover of Twisted in Dream:  The Collected Weird Poetry of Ann K. Schwader (Hippopocampus Press, 2011).  

Most recently, Young-Gautier was included in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s group exhibition, Art to Zoo: Exploring Animal Nature, where her image, Running From the Storm, was featured on the cover of the exhibition catalogue, (Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Nazraeli Press, 2014). 

A Colorado native, Loretta currently lives and works in Denver.
  

Artist Statement

I believe being an artist is both a privilege and an opportunity for self expression. Through my photographic composites, I strive to take the viewer into my utopian vision by presenting an idyllic world that reminds us we are not only occupants, but also caretakers, of planet Earth.

The individual images that I blend into one composition are like tubes of paint applied to the canvas of the photographic substrate. After years of laboriously combining negatives in the darkroom, I discovered the digital platform, which has provided unbounded opportunities to expand my work into new artistic directions.