Burn out poet
Back to 03. Pretentious Writing and Surrealist Self Indulgence
Asian Characters and Other Concerns
As many artists do, I have developed a cannon of repeated imagery that benchmark my style and my metaphoric theology. It would appear that the same questions inevitably pop into the minds of the viewer. I have decided to make a glossary of sorts, for those who feel that their own answers are unsatisfactory and need to hear it from the horses mouth.
Old School’s Contempt
The other day I was eaves dropping. A well established artist was talking to and up an comer who was getting ready to enlarge some photos. She was thinking of enlarging them digitally. He was advising her not to. “Stick with tradition. It’s more cutting edge to avoid using new technology in your art because more and more people are starting to do it.” he said. Another artist I spoke with once said she could never work digitally because the craft and texture of producing art with chemicals and enlargers and light tables was more “honest.”
Both statements irritated me. They both had underlying tones of a desperate ludite or original saboteur.
Brave New World (2003)
After photography displaced traditional mediums as a primary form of recording reality, other art forms were freed to explore and detour away from stale portraits and public monuments. The fluidness of mediums like sculpture and painting allowed them to redefine themselves. Now the ability to work digitally with photographs has allowed that modicum of freedom for photography from it’s own finality. I don’t see myself as a digital artist or even a photomontage artist but more of a photographic painter. I see this machine as a photographic tool allowing me to melt the initial images. The final product of most photographers is my start. My photos are my pigments and brushstrokes.
Don’t Cry Read More »
No Respect (2000)
Why bother?
Because it is my belief that the beauty aesthetic in art is dead, or is at the very least, so open to interpretation that it can no longer be defined. Because sex, death, and violence are the only constants in our world. In art, there is no where else to go. Because technology has only enhanced these urges, not advanced us beyond them as many would contend. These nightmare/fantasies are the very nature of who we are. As a species, as animals, they are something we cannot escape.