Free Wallpaper

Chris Girard, Laguna Beach Shoreline, 2008, Photograph

A quick capture from a flashbulb blends the impressions of moving wind and sea from two seconds’ worth of an open shutter. The still frame records subtle lights from palpitating waves along this Laguna Beach shoreline. The scene is blurry yet in focus. It offers muted golden lights dancing at the base of the sand. These lights look as if water intermingles with tides at the bottom of the ocean floor.

The capture offers physical proximity, time, and place attached to it. The photograph was taken at midnight in Spring 2009 at Thalia Street Beach near the center part of this South Orange County town. Laguna Beach is an artistic destination that for some has never been a destination but home. I went to high school at neighboring Dana Hills High School and I worked at Fingerhut Gallery with a few of the Growlers on Forest Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway before it imploded.

Laguna Beach Shoreline can be printed beautifully on paper or used as high-quality wallpaper for a desktop.

Download Gold Waves at http://chrisgirard.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/girard_-_13_-_8x10rgb-1.jpg.

Chris Girard, Running Hill, 2011, Photograph

The specter of some lost party runs atop a looming hill before the sun low in the sky completely sets. Below the dusky horizon, fractured light creates a myriad of colorful pulses which complement the sad colors of the early evening. The action of running is the centerpiece of the photo overlay which captures a set of black and white figures stark in motion. At the pinnacle of the dark hill, cool tones of blue, green, and purple almost bleed underneath the swollen charcoal sky. Running Hill can be printed beautifully on paper or as high-quality wallpaper for a computer desktop.

Download Gold Waves at http://chrisgirard.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/girard_-_07_-_8x10rgb.jpg.

Chris Girard, Gold Waves, 2005, Photograph

Elements of warmth and whimsy illuminate this conceptual twist on a modernist composition. Despite the contemporary style of Gold Waves, the imagery retains a fanciful, even fairy tale, quality. Conceivably, the rippling tide of golden currents unfurls like the hair from Rapunzel’s tower. Or peradventure, Rumpelstiltskin has spun a mountain of straw into gold thread.

Materially, the photograph captures the motion of a fan beating inside its encasement. Repeating in a pattern like a flowing current, the blades seem to vibrate, rather than spin, within the cage. Gold Waves can be printed beautifully on paper or as high-quality wallpaper for a computer desktop.

Download Gold Waves at http://chrisgirard.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/girard_-_02_-_8x10rgb.jpg.

Chris Girard, Ice Fog, 2012, Photograph

Life on this moon may not be found on the surface but in the sky. The burst of cool blue light glows in ice fog as if it holds an energy source of its own. The midnight star brightens small bits of icy frost permeating a barren skyscape defined by the pathos of a vanished civilization. The atmosphere surrounding the noon moon sun is on a distant planet that makes hopeful space cadets wish for water. Ice Fog can be printed beautifully on paper or used as wallpaper for a computer desktop.

Download Ice Fog at http://chrisgirard.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/girard_-_22_-_8x10rgb.jpg.

Chris Girard, Shampoo, 2004

Instant recognition of bright, showy colors propels the viewer into a voyeuristic tour of consumer culture. In Shampoo, a telephoto lens extracts an image of misty, warm-colored shapes. They are seemingly lifted from the personal hygiene aisle of a grocery store. This trio of visually vague, but subconsciously unmistakable, commercial products fades into a pop art fog, transforming the banal into the exotic. The line-up of plastic bottles features gradients of minimalist shapes and contours of mass-produced goods and can be printed beautifully on paper or as high-quality wallpaper for a desktop.

Download Shampoo at http://chrisgirard.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/girard_-_19_-_8x10rgb.jpg.

Chris Girard, Tectonic Trees, 2012, Photograph

Long, slender tree branches reach up from the sunny cliffs of Los Angeles’ Griffith Park. The puzzle-like design they create resembles both a geological map of tectonic plates and the municipal grid pattern of the underlying city. Further up the limbs, a winding set of wooden fingers stretches toward a twinkling periwinkle sky, while a vibrant spray of African lilies dances in the cool, soothing breeze. A luminescent image overlay engenders an airy quality to the trees. They seem to stand closer to the sun than to the earth below. Tectonic Trees can be printed beautifully on paper or used as high-quality wallpaper for a computer desktop.

VOTE4ART

Spectrum Miami and Red Dot Miami featured Tectonic Trees during world-famous Art Basel in Miami, Florida. Artbox.Projects, which exhibited the artwork at its booth, features many artworks by artists from all over the world. This Swiss-based group launched a mobile voting platform for artwork called VOTE4ART at their booth during these events. Thousands of spectators at the event as well as many more mobile VOTE4ART users voted Tectonic Trees as winner.

Download Explorers at http://chrisgirard.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/girard_-_09_-_8x10rgb.jpg.

Chris Girard, Explorers, 2011, Photograph

A mid-century mystery man looms in the background of this noir-inspired image. Explorers melds the cool undertones of Griffith Park with the warm under-glow of Los Angeles. The city’s landscape acts like its underlying tectonic plates; while the still, natural landscape of Griffith Park rests high above, the rapid, immediate movement of city life traverses below. The soft, wavy, brushstroke-like quality reflects the style of 19th-century British romantic landscape painter J. M. W. Turner. Explorers can be printed beautifully on paper or as high-quality wallpaper for a computer desktop.

Download Explorers at http://chrisgirard.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/girard_-_15_-_8x10rgb.jpg.

Chris Girard, Filament Light, 2005, Photograph

A spark of Filament glimmers and grows swaddled in a membrane of light, protected by its hard but fragile shell. Like paint on canvas, light on paper is the photographer’s brushstroke. Filament reveals the genesis of its luminescence and thus the palette of photographic expression. Filament Light can be printed beautifully on paper or as high-quality wallpaper for a desktop.

Download Filament Light (2480 x 1984 pixels) at http://chrisgirard.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/girard_-_06_-_8x10rgb.jpg.

Chris Girard, Infinite Movement (Umbrella), 2003

Electricity, a cornerstone of modernity, inspires the concept of infinite movement in a twisting umbrella. Both mechanical structure and ghost-like shadows weave realism and abstraction together. This also establishes a notion of duration in the image. The rendition of a moving gear looks like an electric current. And the clockwise flow perpetuates the belief that there is no stopping the machine.

What can be considered a photograph taken a century after the height of a modernist movement over a century ago is not so old. Both time and motion conjure the energy behind a ticking clock that accelerates the pace of life and can also liberate stillness. Innovation, the radical departure from the universal beliefs that had preceded in the past, is such an iconoclasm.

Infinite Movement (Umbrella) can be printed beautifully on paper or as high-quality wallpaper.

Download Infinite Movement (Umbrella)
at http://chrisgirard.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/girard_-_03_-_8x10rgb.jpg.