In my cyanotypes, matter is translated into degrees of opacity and translucency, which are the two-dimensional counterparts to thick and thin. As a process, light is the active ingredient and waiting is the passive ingredient. Ultimately, the cyanotypes document the gesture of placing physical matter on paper. The immediacy of this process serves as a counterpoint to the more deliberate and labor-intensive task of building sculptural forms, whose invisible dimensions are revealed in the after images of their companion cyanotypes. Fingerprints, DNA strands, and microscopic cultures contain information that has the power to describe form. Such is the case with the cyanotypes and their relationship to their forms of origin. Of on-going concern is my interest in seeing how much meaning and imagery I can extract from one idea or process. In producing generations of images from one source I am able to extend the life of that source and, in a sense, recycle it.
"An early form of photography, cyanotypes are typically characterized by a white image with a blue middletone. precisely the tonal relationship that structures Hill's sculptures and drawings. By incorporating a form historically used for botanical studies. such as those that fill Anna Atkins' 19th-century album, Hill suggests that her work might also have an empirical origin. In the prints, it looks as if Hill's familiar forms have been x-rayed to reveal the axial skeleton of some organism, or the molecular structure of a particular substance.”
- Ingrid Schaffner, on Robin Hill from ARTFORUM 1995
