In my years of making art, I have worked with different materials, mixing and matching things that should or should not have been combined. I have experimented with many different styles and methods. From realism to abstract, from drawing and painting to photography and even explored areas that still don’t have names (and should never again see the light of day. But that’s another story). In all, I tend to think that the exploration of art should be the aim of an artists career. And in all my explorations I have never really got the kind of negative feedback, until I started my most recent work.
Through history, quite often, there has been push-back and criticism for anything new and different appearing in the art world. When photography first appeared it was not considered by many to be “art.” It was science, it was simply a way of accurately recording what was in front of you. Only through the hard work and dedication of photographers who did not give up, did the photographic mediums take their place in the world of art. Today, I don’t think there is anyone who believes that photography, if well presented, is not art.
Which brings me to my current work, Digital Painting. Through the years my explorations have raised a few eyebrows and maybe even bothered some people. I did some things that brought up comments like, “you can’t do that,” or “why would you even want to do something like that?” (Just a friendly reminder, never tell me I cannot do something.) But nothing has gotten more attention than Digital Painting.
A digital painting is a work of art done on a computer. It may or may not be done with a “paint” program. It is not done with physical brushes, or pastels, or pencils. And until it is printed out, it only exists in as a computer file. A digital painting may mimic more traditional methods or it may look like a true child of the digital age and be composed of pixels, sometimes to the point where the pixelation of the image is exaggerated.
How I came to digital painting is very simple. It happened because I was a Graphic Designer for many years. Most of my art was expressed through my graphic work. Although I did some posters and display using traditional methods as time went on I got away from hands on “artsy” stuff. And then came the computer. The drawing board disappeared and was replaced by a “workstation.” Typesetters were out of work. The changes in my field were many and maddening at times. I didn’t get my hands dirty anymore. I started doing work that was more technical, or “colder,” I thought, than what I did on a drawing board. I went through the same transitions as many others. For a while it was interesting, even exciting, as I explored the new possibilities. But after a while, it got boring. I started looking for ways to bring the look of hand work back into my designs. Skills learned while retouching photos grew into methods to create images in new ways. While there were times I did some hand work on illustrations more and more I found I could get some of the same effects doing the work on my computer. (And I didn’t have to take digital photographs or scan the illustrations to get them into the computer.
After some years Graphic Design began to lose some of it’s original excitement for me. I got burned out and held a series of jobs that had absolutely nothing to do with art of any kind. I got bored with that too. (Boredom seems to pop up quite often in this story, doesn’t it?) I started doing artwork again and ran into a problem. My ideas far outran my physical art skills. My computer and a copy of Photoshop gave me the ability to go in new directions. Back at my workstation my imagination was no longer running faster that my skills. I found I could realize my ideas and a Wacom pad took the place of my brushes and paper.
I’ve taken some flack for it. People have said, “you can’t do that,” and “you can’t do work on a computer and make it look like a painting. That’s dishonest.”
There is no dishonesty in doing work on a computer that looks like a painting. Especially when I tell you right up front, “this is a digital painting.” And remember, don’t tell me I can’t do something.