Digital Images
Let yourself meditate on these immaterial places in the digital files below and feel your own proprioception. (https://phys.org/news/2006-04-sixth-space.html).
Always each artwork is completely open to personal, and non-verbal, interpretation.
What you see on one day will be different than on another. our daily experiences as we move through this life layer on top of what we have known. In fact, To have long relationships with works of art is a good way of seeing the evidence of one’s own DEVELOPMENT FROM AGE TO AGE.
Here is a timeline of the HIGHLIGHTS of moving towards a digital expression from the old-fashioned and deeply historied education in painting to being able to fully create something satisfactorILy in Procreate.
It began in 1984, with the development of Macpaint, which i was introduced to as a first-semester freshman in college at Bennington in Vermont. The very first person I met, Mark Lorton, dragged me from the dining hall one dark fall night to the computer science lab. I had never even been in this building before, but he led me, literally, to a Mac and gave me the mouse and said "try it!" I dove in but didn't get far. It was intuitive, but I'd had my own studio already for five years and enjoyed the sensuousness of oil paint. This was just four years after the term "digital art" came into use (https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/the-history-of-digital-art). I REMEMBER DISTINCTLY HOW UNCONNECTED TO THE IMAGE ON THE COMPUTER I FELT.
AFTER GRADUATE SCHOOL I VENTURED INTO PHOTOGRAPHY CLASSES IN PHILADELPHIA AND AT THE SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS IN NEW YORK CITY. I MADE MY OWN DARKROOM IN MY APARTMENT AND WOULD DEVELOP MY FILM IN MY BATHTUB. I HAD MY OWN ENLARGER AND TRIED WORKING THROUGH SOME IDEAS OF ABSTRACTION ITHROUGH PATTERNING AND MOTION BLUR. THE FORMAT WAS JUST TOO SMALL FOR ME AND I WASN'T READY TO STEP THAT FAR AWAY FROM PAINTING.
With the rise of digital cameras, digital video cameras, and smartphones with digital capturing devices, i cycleD through each of these developments, wanting to reach somewhere which had yet to be revealed. LIKE ALL ARTISTS, I STARTED DIGITALLY DOCUMENTING MY WORK AND IMPROVING THE IMAGES WITH PHOTOSHOP.
I BECAME A REGULAR AT THE FOUR WALLS SLIDE AND FILM CLUB HOSTED BY MIKE BALLOU IN BROOKLYN IN THE 1990S. I PRESENTED SOME VIDEOS WHICH I HAD PIECED TOGETHER IN IMOVIE, THANKS TO WILLIAM STONE. I WOULD GO TO HIS LOFT IN DESOLATE CHELSEA ON THE WEST SIDE AT NIGHT AND LOSE MYSELF IN THE MORPHING IMAGERY.
I got a grant IN 2001 to buy A POWERFUL Sony digital video cAMERA LIKE THE ONE THEY USED IN THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. I STARTED TAKING VIDEO AND TRYING TO FIND A WAY TO ABSTRACT IT MEANINGFULLY.
AROUND THIS TIME I BIT THE BULLET AND TOOK A CLASS IN FINAL CUT PRO AND SOON PURCHASED IT FOR MYSELF. MY EXPERIENCE WITH IMOVIE SEGWAYED INTO FINAL CUT SEAMLESSLY. FROM THEN ON I HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO SUBTLY LAYER MY DIGITAL IMAGE FILES IN A WAY I COULD ONLY DO IN MY MIND.
I WATCHED OTHER PEOPLE IN THE ART WORLD COME WITH THEIR TAKE ON DIGITAL VIDEO, AND, LIKE ANY GOOD ARTIST, TOOK MENTAL NOTES.
AROUND THIS TIME I BIT THE BULLET AND TOOK A CLASS IN FINAL CUT PRO AND SOON PURCHASED IT FOR MYSELF. MY EXPERIENCE WITH IMOVIE SEGWAYED INTO FINAL CUT SEAMLESSLY. FROM THEN ON I HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO SUBTLY LAYER MY DIGITAL IMAGE FILES IN A WAY I COULD ONLY DO IN MY MIND.
IN 2001 BITFORMS GALLERY OPENED IN CHELSEA, A FEW BLOCKS FROM WHERE I LIVED. I WAS ALWAYS EXCITED TO SEE WHAT PEOPLE WERE MAKING, HOW ARTWORK HAD NOW BECOME TRULY INTERACTIVE. THE AUDIENCE BECAME PARTICIPANTS, AS HAD LONG BEEN HAPPENING IN PERFORMANCE ART.
IN OR 2002 I EXHIBITED AN ABSTRACT DIGITAL VIDEO IN MY SOLO EXHIBITION OF PAINTINGS AT WINSTON WACHTER FINE ART, WHICH WAS IN AN EDITION OF FIVE AND EACH CAME WITH A UNIQUE BOOKLET WITH THE TEXT WRITTEN BY NEDA POURANG.
THIS SAME VIDEO WAS CENTRAL TO MY EXHIBITION IN 2003 AT MATERIALS AND APPLICATIONS, AN ALTERNATIVE ART SPACE, IN SILVERLAKE IN LOS ANGELES.
MEANWHILE, ADOBE PHOTOSHOP HAD BEEN DEVELOPING AND THE FUTURE WAS BEFORE US... AND THE MAC COMPUTER BECAME INDISPENSABLE...
TO BE CONTINUED...
(UPCOMING IS THE CREATION OF PARISH EDITIONS AND THE DIGITAL IMAGES PRINTED ON A LARGE SCALE...)
In making these NFT’s I’ve had the serious pleasure of going back into older work that has been collected by somebody unknown to me. I’ve made and loved the paintings, let them go, and now can utilize digital technology to reinvestigate them. It is almost ridiculously enjoyable as an artist. In my paintings, I aim to make deep space. People say they would like to dive into and swim around in my paintings. NFT’s give me the chance to take it to the next level.
I made the original of this painting in 2012 and it left shortly thereafter. a sexy painting with red and gold, it has the colors of opulence and royalty. I used both spheres and unapologetically flat circles. This combination creates an illusion of space, and then the Modernist insistence of the flat fact of the canvas contradicts it, as does the flat panel of a monitor.
Purple Haze is a view into a benevolent sub-atomic universe. One must loosen the mind and allow oneself to go into a kind of meditation or mesmerization to delve into this vista. In Nancy Princinthal's recent biography of Agnes Martin, she quotes her as having said that art "requires a relaxation of control," (https://news.artnet.com/art-world/agnes-martin-nancy-princenthal-1425421). Lose yourself in this field of bubbles and circles as they, at the speed of nature, float, rise, fall, and go on ad infinitum regardless of humankind's follies.
There are a number of versions of this song and I think I was listening to a lot of jazz and blues around the time of making the painting, in 2007, especially Billie Holiday. Here is a link I’d like to share with you to my favorite audio interpretation of the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GohBkHaHap8
There is a serenity, a near laziness in which my circles and spheres float up the surface of Mood Indigo. I think of lazy summer evenings when it gets dark late and the air smells sweet and humid. There is an ease of life, the hurried day departing, juxtaposed by a nervous electric flickering of what we’d call “heat lightning.” I think of fireflies in the deep woods, appearing from seemingly nowhere, as blue dusk became night, cicadas as the soundtrack.
The longer one looks at the NFT, the more details one finds.
Lemonade Sunrise, 2021
