Art is the Imagination's playground
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Artist Statement
I sometimes describe my paintings as “Fantasies,” in the musical sense of the word: pieces that are improvisational in style, often involving variations on a theme. They do have a subject, though: a world of Imagination. I believe that all art lives by the power of Creative Imagination to stretch almost anything into a new reality.
In the world of Imagination, a work can be representational or wildly abstract, or anywhere in between; what makes it art is that it becomes its own world, on its own terms. Exploring it is an adventure--to be shared, I hope, by artist and viewer.
Driven to Abstraction?
For me, the magic of art--what draws us in--is the living interplay of shape, colour, line and the other artistic elements. Representation of real objects is time-honoured and perfectly legitimate, but is not in itself what makes a painting art. When people ask why I do mostly abstract work, I usually reply that I believe all art is abstract; if all a painting has going for it is looking "real," it might just as well be a snapshot. Given that, the answer to the question is simply, "Why not?"
About Digital Painting (Yes, it is painting!)
Digital art takes different forms, and means different things to different people. I know that many people have trust issues with it. As a matter of artistic integrity, I stay within what I can honestly call painting, and my software allows me to do that. The art is my Imaginative playground; the computer provides only the medium with which I enter it.
I paint each image on the computer screen using digital brushes and colours, just as I might on paper or canvas in traditional media. I start with a blank screen, and no photographs or "computer-generated" images are involved.
My paintings are one-of-a-kind originals. I make no reproductions.
Each painting is completed in archival pigmented inks on watercolour paper or on canvas, for a high-quality, permanent image.