Written Word
Short essays and commentary… merger ramblings.
The Advent of AI
Dreams
Permanency
The Advent of Digital
Themes
My Process
Happy
Psychosis, Dreams, and Surrealism
Quotes
Balance
My Process
Technically, my images are elaborate versions of telephone pole fliers from the punk era.
Usually a scene is created around a character, though on occasion a stage is set first.
I prefer to combine original photography with outside sources, I scan film, prints, and organic material. Even though it is viewed 2 dimensionally, the structure of photoshop is very 3D. My technique is as much sculpting pixels as it is photographic.
I revisit an image....many times, an embarrassingly high number. Ideally I rotate 3-4 images at a time to prevent burn out or getting dizzy on any one. As an ethic, I rarely use distortion filters.
Images are made from 100–300 Layers. I try to limit the number of working Layers to about 30 or 40. This forces me to merge and commit to a certain intent while not totally limiting its direction.
There are a few prominent balancing acts in digital montage. I balance imposing my will on an image and trying to force something to happen, with working off of what is already going on within the canvas. As Sister Wendy would say, working with what my art already knows.
The Advent of Artificial Intelligence
From story telling to written word; painting to photography; digital imaging to AI...here we go again.
This does feel different. Artistically, the issues surrounding originality and contracted collaboration are not new. But, the implications and magnitude are. As if my hand is on a paper bag, feeling the vibration of AI's potential. The enormity is staggering. The possiblity for creative exploration and development of the human spirt is matched by the potential for untold tragedy.
AI can catapult imagery that that could not otherwise be created. There is a modicum of skill in writing a prompt. However...typing a few words into someone else's algorithm, that provides you with a Christmas present 30 seconds later. It is not reasonable to called your own work. In an afternoon you could produce a lifetime of apparent masterpieces. The allure is understandable.
Its place in art is yet to be defined. At the end of the day, I need to look in the mirror and know my art will always come from my head and hands.
The Advent of Digital
When Photography was first discovered it was met with everything from exaltation to charges of blasphemy, an aesthetic Frankenstein. The advent of Digital has experienced a watered down version of this reception.
Already the Digital process is helping to further define photography, not eradicate it. And the glitter of any technology based medium always seems to be a distraction.
With a more powerful tool comes more responsibility, of coarse.
Happy
As a child I was a happy little tyrant.
My sanctuary and major avenue for expression was playing in the sandbox that my father built for me. As an adult my computer took its place. Both are made of Silicon.
In grade one I daydreamed. I imagined I was not in a classroom, that the other children, desks, chairs, and isles were actually rocks and plants in a garden with a stream. As the others paid attention to the teacher, I traced maps by free hand.
This is the same eye hand coordination I now use in digital imaging. Its serendipitous and a little bizarre that I acquired this skill in such a different stage in life.
I feel very lucky that such a tool surfaced in my life time.
Themes & Styles
For this site I have placed images into distinct "galleries". However, many images contain more than one theme, symbolism, passions, or influences. So, could be justified being placed in different Galleries. I still hope for clear intent.
Currently my art is in flux. It often it straddles the lines between “Lowbrow” and traditional Surrealism. There are still comedic gestures, but the increased use of abstracts and Gestalt techniques has inched me closer to Surrealism.
Psychosis, Dreams, and Surrealism
Art is controlled dreaming, and dreams are uncontrolled art. But the relationship between the two is more than the suspension of reality.
The answer lies in the presentation of psychosis. Hallucinations are almost always violent or threatening, they come from a deeper and more primal part of ourselves. Our mind's most primative emotions and themes are simple ones, power (death) and sex. Our bodies are wired heavily for this. I have lamented that more positive emotions are not as engrained, love for example. But they are too complex.
All of this helps to explain why surrealism has a darkness to it. It involves a controlled release of a deeper part of ourselves.
Balancing Act
There are a few prominent balancing acts in digital montage.
First, narrative verses graphic. An element may be appropriate to the story but not work from a design point of view. At the same time and an element can have compositional value and not have any purpose or place in the narrative.
Secondly, I hope I have learned to balance imposing my will on an image and trying to force something to happen, with working off of what is already going on on the canvas. As Sister Wendy would say working with what my art already knows...or something like that.
Lastly, how far should one go with eradicating blemishes? Digital's ability to seamlessly correct imperfections helps to suspend reality and foster believability. But overuse can leave an image pristine and sterile, potentially undermining its intent.
Dreams
Most likely there have only been a handful of people on the planet who have been able to make what is in their head artistically, a reality. I am not even sure that I would want my art to look like my dreams but...many nights I am humbled and exhilarated just before I fall asleep.
I see images that are truly the greatest art that I've ever seen. I believe this experience is true for allot of people. I'm sure this is all rooted in our psyche, none the less I am grateful to our Maker for this twilight state.
Permanency (Faith in Ones and Zeros)
The concept that some how our earthly ambitions and labours will allow us to continue in the hearts and minds of future generations is pervasive in humanity. Whatever it is that fuels the need for permanency, it is certainly found in artists, in varying degrees.
Digital Art is particularly susceptible because of the use of binary code. After all, how could you destroy mathematics. Theoretically an original print can be produced at any time, in a decade or in a century. Moore's Law for technological advancement assures us that these future prints will be significantly better. In fact evidence does support this.
But before you place your faith in ones and zeros.
Consider the problems we currently face every day; file corruption, compatibility issues, machines with moving parts, and planned obsolescence etc. They expose the vulnerability of digital media. This does not even address whether Digital's aesthetic will also survive.
Quotes
Francis Bacon : “My Painting is not violent, it’s life that is violent.”
Banksy : "The time of getting fame for your name on its own is over. Artwork that is only about wanting to be famous will never make you famous.
Any fame is a by-product of making something that means something. You don't go to a restaurant and order a meal because you want to have a shit."
Truman Capote : "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones."
Paul Cezanne : "A Provencal Poussin--that would fit me like a glove ... like Poussin, I would like to put reason in the grass and tears in the sky."
Alexander DeLarge (A Clockwork Orange) : "It was beautiful. It's funny how the colours of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on a screen".
Harry Lime (The Third Man) : "....in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michaelangelo - Leonardo Da Vinci, and the Renaissance....In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce?
...The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly."
Mark Rothko : "It was with the utmost reluctance that I found the figure could not serve my purposes. But a time came when none of us could use the figure without mutilating it."
In his last public statement about his art, he indicated a painting should have "a sense of romanticism, tragedy, and clear pre-occupation with death." (Rothko Rooms)
Simon Schama : "The hushed reverence of the gallery can fool you into believing masterpieces are polite things; visions that soothe, charm and beguile, but actually they are thugs.
Merciless and wily, the greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your sense of reality."
Elie Weisel : "... the opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference."
Orson Welles : “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.”
Robert Williams : "So barbaric is the sensory domain of the eyeball that curiosity supersedes logic, sight is my opiate."
"The purest form of art is to give way to simple visual interest. To look at what you find yourself driven to see. Higher notions of art tend to confine art with lofty moral restrictions. When art is passed off as a quasi-religion which can only be administered and interpreted by a special order of priestly elites, the the system invariably stifles imagination ---- even when the art is as liberal as blobs, slashes and spatters. Art that has to serve as the instrument of artistic revolution is limited by having to react to a greater force in a continual hope of some overthrow, hence becoming the tool of reaction. Even the great revolt is enslaving.
But when all predetermined prejudices are momentarily set aside and you are one of the many at the scene of the horrible accident your libido will do the looking. Something dead in the street commands more measured units of visual investigation than 100 Mona Lisas. It isn't what you like, It's what the fuck you want to see!"
Joel-Peter Witkin : "I have consecrated my life to changing matter into spirit with the hope of someday seeing it all."
(Art) "...a signature from one’s psyche.”