I create psychoanalytical digital experiments utilizing Photoshop and a Wacom tablet. These experiments are snapshots into my polluted psyche, one over-stimulated by our culture’s continuous stream of enticing but disposable information. Although both physical and conceptual processes are vital in producing my work, my intentions are to keep the end results open to interpretation, like a Rorschach test, but without the pressure of proving one’s sanity.
Psyche
I am a child of the early 80’s and I had a television. Because of this, I’ve been seduced by Saturday morning cartoons and their sponsors. They persuaded me to collect plastic figurines and form emotional bonds with their ethical storylines- mere fronts to sell more plastic. This upbringing left me cynical, yet alas unable to break my connection to the animated aesthetic or the concept of duality.
Dualities are motivating: nature versus technology, fantasy versus consumer lifestyle, caricature versus portraiture, and comedy versus horror. Duality is humorous because it tends not to be mutually exclusive. Technology stems from nature, and advertisements use fantasy to sell a consumer lifestyle. It is an ideological concept in a dim world where “good” guys are seldom always good, and “bad” guys rarely admit they are bad.
Some of my favorite and current artistic influences include Naoto Hattori, Dr. Seuss, and Hieronymus Bosch. They all paint imaginative creatures rendered in their individual styles. I appreciate this other worldliness, and aspire to emulate a personal window to a foreign realm.
Process
I have a repressed surrealist vision that subtly leaks out through aggressive abstraction. This vision is filtered through improvisation and reiteration. If I find something interesting but unintentional develop in my work, I embellish it. Like highlighting scary faces in wood grains I explore the canvas, searching for clues that lead to its final appearance. If something is alluring in one digital painting, I will copy and paste it into another. It becomes an experiment in how transplanted imagery can adapt to a new environment.
The Dinosaur Sequence is a great example of how I toggle these processes. First I created a somewhat symmetric black and white collage using a photograph of a dinosaur skeleton. I increased the contrast creating the first in the sequence. Then I duplicated Dinosaur Sequence #1 and improvised over select parts, creating Dinosaur Sequence #2. Like interpreting an inkblot, I searched for imaginable characters hidden in the first sequence and embellished them in the forefront of the second. For Dinosaur Sequence #3 I improvised over Dinosaur Sequence #2 and so forth. I continued this reiteration process for 15 unique digital paintings, each interconnected by source material.
Reflection
The best part of digital painting is actually painting. That is when the mind is active and possibilities rapidly appear and disappear. Once the work is printed it becomes like a trophy, the head of some wild beast. Aesthetically pleasing, but no longer threatening.
Yet aesthetics are what entice the viewer, the lure of dialogue and I value an honest interpretation. The experiment is to test what I can see in a work versus what someone else can
