It's a funny thing.
I spent the formative years of my life convinced I had no art talent. My least favorite class during my school years, after math, was art. Consequently, I never worked towards developing any artistic skills ... and yet, from around the middle of high school on, I've felt an affinity for visual art and have always had some kind of art project in mind or in process.
The upshot is that I have created a number of admittedly primitive artworks over the years: sculpture, found object art, paintings, etc.
Don't get me wrong. I think the opening of this introduction makes clear that I know I am not an artist in any real sense of the word. I have friends who are real artists, and have worked for and appreciated real artists; men and women who have dedicated their lives to producing true works of fine beauty. I have no illusions about being in their ranks.
Still, I am happy with the things I have managed to produce over the years. The most important lesson I ever learned about art is that you make it for yourself first. If you please that audience, you have nothing to be ashamed of and all the non-constructive criticism in the world cannot harm you.
Limited as my skills are, I like what I see here - and so I have the gall to share it with you.
Digital Illustration: What started out as excercises for a class in Adobe Illustrator became a fascination with the tool. The lengthy process I use to go about creating these keeps their number fairly low but the plans I have for the technique - projects both large and small - is far larger in scope.
Sculpture: "Cast as often as you can because, once you leave this job, you'll look back and realize you didn't cast enough." -Mike Willy. Truer words have never been spoken to me. I worked for three years at a bronze art foundry in the mid to late 90's and had the opportunity during that time to cast for metal weight cost. My biggest regret is that I didn't create more - particularly the two projects that remain unfinished.
Painting: I've dabbled in painting off and on over the years, mainly to little effect. Over the years, however, Adobe Photoshop techniques have informed me in ways that no painting instruction ever has. I have a number of painting projects awaiting my attention. Watch this space.
Found Object Art: The genesis for this practice lies, I believe, in the action figure/toy car/block tableaus I and my brother used to create when we were kids. While we enjoyed playing with these objects in the more traditional fashion, nothing used to fascinate us more than setting the toys up in intricate arrays and then, before bringing the whole mess down with rubberbands, staring intently at our creation from all angles; drinking in our efforts. Then there is my fascination for picking up crap from the ground: bits of metal, strange rocks, odd sticks, foliage, discarded plastic. Finally, there is the sense that I have no real ability to draw or paint still stuck in the back of my head. Voila: found object art.
cae 10-2010
