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.
Of Light and Layers Studios is a collaborative practice between contemporary abstract artist Claire Hankey and professional photographer Petra Blacklock.
Our work grows from shared values of slowness, observation, imperfection, and a quiet reverence for the natural world. We create high quality, multi-exposure prints that bring nature into the home. Each piece evolves through both intention and chance, a dialogue between surface and depth, concealment and clarity. Using botanicals, still life elements, original abstract paintings, light, shadows, and fabric, we explore how two creative worlds can meet and form something neither could create alone.
What began as a spontaneous experiment has become an evolving conversation shaped by the joy of creating together. Though each of us continues to explore our own creative paths, Of Light and Layers Studios offers a meeting place, a space where two mediums intertwine to form something neither could bring to life alone.
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How it began
This collaboration first sparked during a branding shoot for Claire’s artwork, a moment where photography and painting naturally came together. That creative overlap lit the fuse for something more.
It's amazing that this one photograph led us on an exciting journey and we are already planning our fourth collection of prints together.
All of our prints are available to purchase online, they come white glove wrapped at source and sent to you within 7 days. You can also see the prints in person on the Vantage Stand at Clerkenwell Design Week in May, and at Claire's Studio in Leigh Marina at weekends. If you are making a special journey, get in touch first to check we will be there....
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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."