Category: Art Talk

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The art of art

#0840 The art of art
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My technical mess-up (the hard disk crash and subsequent temporary loss of pen pallet and canvas) led to asking again why I did not use real media to birth the images in the first place. That is an interesting question. Even if I wanted a website, why this digital constraint? I have answered that in other posts in a sketchy way… exploring the psyche in cyberspace. It is good to state it again as it is central. I have for years past thought about what has happened with the psychology of text as it has become digitalised. See my other blog: Psyberspace But images and art, not text on my mind now. The image is the stuff the psyche is made of.

I like art to exude some sort of consciousness about (a phrase I just picked up here), “the art of making art”. Art, in its important and interesting moments is partly (but not wholly) about art.

The shape of my work is becoming clearer. I am pleased with a bolder line in the concept. It is not a new line, but it is firmer today. Not having the PC helped to see why I missed it. I need to do every sketch digitally. Physical sketching is fine, but it is not in this project. It would be as if Piet Mondrian switched to landscapes.

I am on a narrow path, for all the diversity in the sketches, they have to be digital.

And what is the central line on that path?

To do digital sketches? Surprisingly no.

To make prints from those sketches? No.

I work with the relationship between the virtual & the physical. It is in the RELATIONSHIP – it is all in the relationship!

The whole 1000 are a negative, a template, they have a relationship with their children, their physical children, the prints or other objects still to be born. The children can phone home, each object has a number and name. Google that to return.

Relationship between the virtual world and the physical is the punctum, that is where I will do my obsessive sticking to the point.

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Layer Tunnel Pattern

#0835 Layer Tunnel Pattern
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In a lot of art it is integral that one can see the process, in the strokes, or even in the glimpse of the studio. The tools are showing here!

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Still don’t have my Tablet back. Do have a new disk from the crashed HDD, has a lot of good stuff rescued, but not the missing 10 days sketches. Yet. Back to the HDD Dr. tomorrow.

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Far from feeling curtailed today, I am stimulated by the process of the technological and human failures (failed to backup those missing days – I was moving around too much to reconnect the external drive, so Second Copy would simply say “Drive not found” and go back to sleep.)

One good thing was a synchronicity while surfing. I found some digital art I liked. There is so much, and so much of that leaves me neutral.

Somehow they also got me sketching, thinking.

Here are 2 images I saw & liked.
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ArtRage 2.5

#0863 ArtRage 2.5
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A quick doodle in ArtRage 2.5, which I have just downloaded – still no pen, so this is a mouse sketch. This is a break through interface & functionality. I have said it before perhaps – I wish Corel had an interface like this! All the extra functionality in Corel X takes so long to learn, and the interface, apes Photoshop and someone needs to break away from that anachronism. I wish every kid had a Tablet with this on it. Are those $100 PCs tablets?

I have often, in ArtRage 2.00 wished for this or that. All the enhancements I wished for are here in this version. Layers work like a dream. The new default location of layers is fantastic. There will be more to discover… when I have my pen back!

An admin note about numbering follows:

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Mondrian R2

#0828 Mondrian R2
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Look no pen! This originated on the Mondrimat site. I did a bit of post-production in ArtRage 2 and also in ACDsee. Piet Mondrian is just one of those people I was thinking of who was cutting edge. Arrangement, composition even when there is very little else to go on, or especially when there is little to distract from the abstraction, counts. Not a new idea, but he made an art form out of that simple idea.

The software uses his rules, even though I don’t know what they are. So there is a bit of original Piet Mondrian in this! Though I confess to thinking Diebenkorn as well.

Related: Pollock’o’matics.

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Curtailed

#0824 Curtailed
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I can think “arm move” and it does. There are people who have lost or never had that ability. I have lost the ability to sketch on my screen like I used to. Temporarily, frustrating rather than a tragedy. I have also possibly lost the last few sketches – and the originals of a few more, I’ll hear tomorrow.

Firstly more about this sketch which was done with a pen on a digital pad, and then some reflections on evolution.

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Black White Blue

#0816 Black White Blue
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This is still part of the repeat process in the previous two images. My mother in law Marg, a landscape Gardiner, looked out at a row of cherry blossom trees in full bloom in Hagley Park, each tree had a dark tree as a back drop. She said, thy have followed a principle here I always recommend: “When you are onto a good thing, repeat, repeat repeat.”

That gave me permission in a way to repeat older ideas and of course there is repetition within these images as well.

Some ideas of making this one physical follow:

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Henry

#0802 Henry
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From a video, a documentary called Who Gets to Call It Art? by Peter Rosen. (review) This is the Henry who was …. well what? Some sort of mentor to Andy Warhol and David Hockney and a whole bunch of N.Y. abstract expressionists. Will write more here, and post work from both of those artists of Henry if I can find it, and hopefully one by Alice Neel. It is such a male bunch, but there were women and she must have been one, as well as Lee Krasner, they still fall away in the gender gap.

Have found some more:

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Break

#0796 Break
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I explore lines quite a bit. And circles and crosses, more coming up. A line is a lot. It makes a break between this & that. Boundaries. Gaps, barriers. I like lines. I am safe with a good line. The Thousand Sketches is a line and a circle, it is a boundary around this project, makes me work hard, but I know it will stop.

Lines, I have fiddled with this one, made it gray, this felt very blue. And widened the gap! Will post results later.

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I just read an interview in The Christchurch art gallery Bulleting 150 Julian Dashper whose exhibition in Christchurch I saw. Here he talks about circles:

  • l notice that circles recur often in your work, not only with your records but also in your repeated use of drum sets and the (0) paintings. What is the significance of circles for you?

    • I first started working with circles circa (smile out loud) 1992. Another older artist had suggested to me that a circle was really the hardest shape to work with as it totally dictated itself. It’s difficult to paint a budgie inside a circle and for it still to look good, I guess. I just immediately thought,‘Gosh a painting that makes itself’, and rushed our and bought a compass. Circles also echo ideas in nature For me, and you can’t get more perfect than that (nature, I mean). Actually, the thing is, Peter, every artist has to start somewhere and I figure a circle is as good a place as a railway station.

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    Born Digital

    #0765 Born Digital
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    Had a great conversation with my friend Brian about the relationship between info and objects. He summed up an idea that has been bubbling in my blog posts with these words “born digital”. That is a central realization in the Thousand Sketches project. Art is either born physical, and then described or photographed to be digital, or it is born digital and made physical, it can have many physical forms.

    One more image, followed by lots more and more TALK!

    #0765 Born Digital
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    Continue reading “Born Digital”

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