BUT IS THIS ART ?

As I see it, much contemporary painting features ‘painterly surfaces‘ with energetic brushwork which engenders an emotional response, with many current works exploring inner worlds and personal connections to examine the human condition. At the other end of the spectrum conceptual pieces are designed to stimulate our intellect, questioning our perceptions and understandings. In this debate my work perhaps falls more towards the conceptual approach, appearing cool and somewhat distant. It may be seen to be simplistic in its depiction of known objects using, what appears to be, a straightforward realism. There is little mystery in these images and no overt  allusion to feelings, other than, perhaps, a joy of capturing light playing on different surfaces and glistening on the edges of shapes. 

On closer inspection the mark making exposes a set of discrete shapes which the brain assembles into familiar objects. I quite like this duality and try to leave images with enough of this evidence to show that these are not photographs, but are made by close observation of the subject using a digital draw package.  There is no computer trickery or photographic process involved in this work. The software provides a set of drawing tools and is somewhat like a printmaking process with both possibilities and limitations and I work within these constraints to produce the images.

Much like photography however, the subject options and compositional choices are a major part of my process. Even after having selected an object or an idea the number of pictorial possibilities is endless and whittling these down to one image will often take longer than the actual drawing. The angle of view, the lighting, the shadows and the position of the object within the picture frame, as well as the colour of the ground, all have to be carefully considered. But the aspect of this practice  that has caused me the most anguish is the relationship between the images and the texts which describe the reason for them being created.