Digital Tools

Looking back at the arch of my art career, there were a couple decades of tearing through dozens of media and techniques, looking for a process, a visual language that felt right. Then in 2000, I took up Photoshop which did just that in a big way. The digital world was right for me. I worked a solid 12 years in that process, and while I often got stuck, needing new inspiration, I always found it in the same program. The process was right. Any time there was a downturn in my enthusiasm for creating art, I could easily identify the reason and dig myself out of a hole. During that time, while producing The Weekly Press, I discovered even more rightness in the idea of images moving in time. I’m still at the very early stages of learning how I’ll find my way in that process, but it is another passage.

It was a bit of a shock when I quit painting in order to produce work digitally. Galleries that sold my mixed media paintings lost interest in my new work. Collectors and enthusiasts of earlier work were scratching their heads over this new direction. Even fellow artists were somewhat mystified as to what I could possibly like about sitting at a computer to make art. Interestingly, people who hadn’t seen my new work just didn’t think it took any creativity at all to produce art with a computer. I mean anyone could do that; the computer did all the work, right?

It’s just another tool; a rather complex one, and hugely powerful, yes. But the bottom line is it still just sits there if not told to do anything (well, mostly). In this blog, I intend to carry on about digital tools and implications for the work we make with them. I hope you’ll follow along.

Thanks.