My Artistic Journey – Art as a Journey Home

An overview of my journey as an artist, moving though the various styles and techniques I have attempted over the years, in order to come to the place where I belong.

Surrealism

Initially inspired by surrealism, I experimented with surreal imagery, an ‘economy of images’ (after Rene Magritte) and collage techniques (after Max Ernst). These are techniques which I have tried and found useful, and have returned to on several occasions. They are good for providing a ‘shock factor’ and can be used to make a powerful point and convey a message.

Surreal imagery can also simply convey a sense of mystery, which I find refreshing. Something which makes you look again and question our state of being and realise that we don’t know all the answers. There are still unsolved mysteries in the world.

Abstract

I explored the abstract through an interest in geometry and later, more particularly, in sacred geometry.

I have a love of forms, which are beautiful in their own right (which arose from my search for an ‘economy of images’). By reducing things to their component parts, a perfection of form hanging in space arises. These have a monolithic quality, which, in a similar way to surrealism, makes us question our state and the world we live in.

Why is the object divorced from its surroundings? Why is that significant? This also imbues the object with a sense of mystery and power.

Tromp L’oeil

By painting in a hyper-realistic manner, the viewer can be deceived into thinking they see what is not there. That is one definition of Tromp L’oeil painting, which means ‘deceives the eye.’ By creating a scene which is life-like and yet divorced from its surroundings one can create a reality which is encroaching onto our own and in some way breaking through.

My love of mystery and mysteries led me to create portals into other dimensions, night spilling into day and sunlight and thunder co-existing in the sky. My favourite weather is a day of sun, wind and rain, then sun again.

By setting up a scene which is more real than reality, it is possible to question the inherent nature of reality, and ask which is the ‘real’ image. This plays with the idea of reality.

Plato’s idea of all objects having an original template in some higher plane, and Baudrillard’s simulacra are two philosophies which help ground this idea.

Accordingly, paintings are

“imitations… three removes from reality” (Karelis: 1976).

Therefore, the painting is less real that the object, but the object is less real than the idea of the object.

Perspective

In order to produce highly realistic images, I experimented with perspective, which led me back to geometry and sacred geometry. In fact, I found the perspective lines more beautiful in their own right than some of the images I was trying to paint realistically.

The perspective lines lead the eye in and create a virtual space, which, without removing the lines, sites an object in space more effectively. Instead of hanging in space, the object is grounded within the framework of lines.

The inherent mystery of perspective is in its origin, which occurred during the Renaissance. This allowed the marriage of art and science to take place because it was essentially an analysis of seeing. It became another way to interpret the world around us.

There have been many artists who have attempted to interpret the world around them in ways and through processes not dissimilar to those of scientists. Most notably Leonardo Da Vinci who

“regarded all the physical sciences and arts as integral components in a great continuum” (Kemp 1990)

The study of perspective is also very closely linked with theories of perception, which have taken on a whole new dimension since the discovery of the quantum uncertainty principle. This has provided scientists and artists alike with a new understanding of the ambiguity of perception. And it is this which has turned the prevailing view of perspective, as simply a tool used by artists to imitate nature more closely, into a dynamic, fluid concept by which artists can create space itself in new, open and imaginative ways. This is because perspective drawing and

“visual representation is not properly mimetic but constructive. It rationalises space.” (Iversen 2005)

Science and science fiction

I have always been interested in science fiction and in particular science fiction illustration and space art. In attempting to find convergence between the realms of art and science (which has been a major theme of my art) I revisited some of my favourite space artists such as David Hardy and attempted to emulate some of his moonscape scenes.

The medium I used was encaustic wax.

Now encaustic is a curious medium. By applying coloured blocks of wax to a hot iron then sweeping the colour over a shiny piece of card, the wax sits on the surface of the card and can be wiped off again if the artist is not happy with what they have produced. In this way it is very easy to produce quick and simple landscapes with just a few flourishes of the iron. The colours are vibrant and luminous, so that the end result is very striking.

The reason I chose to paint these moonscapes in encaustic was just because of the quick and easy nature of the medium. I was essentially copying another artist’s work and did not want to linger over what I thought of as something slightly unethical (however, in retrospect I realised that There is Nothing New Under the Sun and all artists copy from time to time).

But the way in which I used the wax was completely different and uniquely my own. To create the moons hanging in the sky above a barren landscape I used a cut out mask to cover the rest of the card as I swept silver wax into the corner or the card. I then used sharp tools to scrape away a little wax to create moon surface detail.