Of Light and Layers Studios
UNIQUE, MULTIPLE EXPOSURE FINE ART PRINTS
Bring nature into your home with beautiful, layered and
easy to frame, fine art prints.
The studio’s work is a collaboration between abstract artist Claire Hankey and photographer Petra Blacklock.
Claire works with paint and printmaking and Petra works with botanical forms, light and composition and together, somewhere between the two, something else emerges entirely.
These aren’t reproductions of artwork. They are the finished piece: multi-exposure photographs that fuse real paintings and nature. Brush strokes and seasonal detail held together in a single print.
For the collectors who love calm, subtle textures and the beauty in nature’s fine details.
How it began
This collaboration started accidentally during a brand shoot for my artwork where portrait photography and painting unexpectedly aligned. It sparked an idea for a creative dialogue that hasn’t stopped since.
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When Petra and I create together it’s always with intention and without pressure. We come with ideas, pick paintings or sketches, shape a plan and then let nature become our focus.
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There is beauty in noticing. The light moves. A shadow falls differently. Shapes and layers. What we planned becomes something else entirely. It’s a fascinating process.
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Around 95% of what we capture honestly doesn’t make the first draft. And that’s OK because of the other 5% and the wow moments. The ones that could only exist because of everything that didn’t work.
Working this way has made us both more selective and over time more honest with each other and more willing to say not yet, or not this one. We’ve learned to trust each other’s voice.
Meet the photographer
I'm Petra, a photographer and my work spans from lifestyle family photography through brand and women portraiture. But at Of Light and Layers Studios, I get to do something a little different. Here I work with nature as my subject. photograph elements found in nature and weave them together with Claire's paintings (sometimes a sketch, sometimes something half-finished) and create images that exist somewhere between the two of us.
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My love for gardens is hugely influenced by my grandmother's love of flowers and her garden was beautifully balanced where parts were for joy, others practical. The way you do with things that are simply there, I didn't quite understand it at the time. It's only now, years on, that I find myself truly seeing what she saw. It's made me more appreciative , more attentive to what's quietly beautiful in nature.
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And the same way of thinking I bring to the work with Claire. What we create together sits somewhere between photography and painting. Which layer is mine? That's part of the point.
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Meet the artist
I'm Claire, a mixed media artist working with paint, print and the kind of materials that already carry a history. Vintage papers, botanical forms pressed from my garden and estuary walks, fragments of my mother's old dress patterns. I'm drawn to surfaces that feel lived in before I've even touched them. My work has always been about what lies just beneath. Layers built up and scratched back, forms that emerge and dissolve, places half-remembered. I grew up in the North West, and those landscapes -the light, the wildness of them, have never really left me. I find the same qualities closer to home now, in the hedgerows and marshes of the Thames Estuary where I live.
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Working with Petra is different to working alone. She finds things in the paintings I hadn't quite seen yet. What we make together sits somewhere between her eye and mine. I'm not always sure where one of us ends and the other begins. I think that's exactly as it should be.
Helen
"I was immediately drawn to the golden tones in 'Amber Drift' it's a beautiful, subtle print "
Sue
"As a gardener and nature lover, these prints were meant for me! I am delighted with mine and it looks perfect framed in a simple wooden frame."
Martin
"I love the way the prints blend photography and art, they are so unique, like entering a magical world."