Digital Artwork 2010 - Liquid Dreams

This is an Art blog as much as a photography gallery. The above piece was created for a book named Liquid Dreams by an America author that I have had the pleasure of working with in the past. This project is on hold at the moment as far as I know. The other project is Un Dia Sin Ti a Spanish poetry book you can check out the artwork on a flash enabled device on http://perrylane.org 

The next piece is named Mystery of the pyramids and was painted in oils around 2005 for a good friend as a house warming present.  

The last is a painting I did for a girlfriend now an ex - girlfriend, actually it was starting to look good only needing a glaze or two more of white for highlights - originally the image came from one of my photographs - pity I never put the finishing touches to it but a painting is never finished just abandoned. 

My paining and drawing is mainly on request and usually I make them as presents not for money. Photography is becoming my main creative outlet but not by design, I keep taking photos with a mind to working with them in some other medium and storing them away. I do think the camera is an essential tool for any artist. I must also add I never learned about light in art college it was not until I attended a photography club that I even considered half of my problems representing 3d form were to do with a inept art instructor telling me draw or sketch an object in an evenly lit classroom. 

Photography has also increased my understanding of 3d animation , lighting and camera work. Focal length was a mystery to me over exposed objects were ubiquitous and well the complexity of 3d representation on a 2d surface is the same the tools only change.

It is only now in 2013 when I have a certain competency in a few mediums or to put it another way I can sit at a drawing for more then 8 hours because I want it to look labored and cared for as apposed to rushed. Or that I choose to leave my paint thick in areas because I like the surface quality or I turn a photo to black and white as I know it is more timeless and colours on clothes are not what I want people to see at first glance, these things I mean are decisions I see myself making more frequently. I begin to turn my attention to content and communication , I write and think a lot so why are these thoughts not present in my artworks. I think aesthetics are my priority and I have a long way to go but slowly and surly beauty can have a brain, it is only natural. What I will stay away from but consider is shock and awe - I think every contemporary artist understands this concept - politics is another easy subject to talk about badly and I worry I may offend or incite to riot. You can talk purely through formal concerns in art like the great pyramids leaving perfect proportions to perplex with out a written word one knows of the intelligence and mastery inherent in its construction. 

I guess like most artist I wish to live on in artwork - or at least create artwork that may be remembered, and I don't think I have even come close yet. The first image above is an obvious tribute to a surrealist - again every student of my generation  began loving these works a  generalization for sure but I wish to convey how many people got lost along the way. A quick word by a lecturer that would rather not see surrealism again turns a dreamer into a realist. You can learn obscurity from any quarters but who is to say you should listen to a person what wishes to change your heart for marks in an institution to join the fraternity of the inept to pass on the tradition of the inept  I still enjoy the masters of the past but also the present H.R. Giger being one of my everlasting favorites - a curse word in fine art circles but it was his shocking realism or unreality that drew me in and still does. His suspension of disbelief and tackling  of  vulnerable parts of the human psyche that holds me mesmerized and in awe. Of course he painted big as well then crossed mediums into film winning an Oscar and now runs and curates a museum. 
I have also learned art history only cares about the story the man, the life and the innovation or lack of compromise. Position and timing all play a part of this winning the turner prize may be coveted but is it a ruler with which we can measure greatness ? I am biding my time looking for the right wave and may surf it in to the doors of the bank. Money seems to be the question art is struggling  with most in the early 21st century - from social issues like poverty and artists some of us understanding this through practice to the excesses of Beautiful inside my head forever sale by Damian Hirst. The 20th century gave use the civil rights movement in the U.S.A. and equal pay in Britan for the female Ford workers in Dagenham, even the fall of communism and the ultra modern fall of capitalism or at least the complete proof by investment bankers and our collective governments that it does not work and they bend rules to keep things the way it always has been unequal . I think, yes there might be something of a theme forming here .

It is the artist job and tradition to be an outsider. To detach like no other profession and see society and the world around and turn it upside down - like looking at a photo of a room from underneath a glass floor people take notice as they have never seen it before put so eloquently, odd. Not to mention the others who have found employment in the Arts yes it is more popular then ever as the internet needs designers and editors and photographers and yes men to do the Master bidding.