Thermal Dynamics, Digital Painting

TD integrates my past styles and influences into an expansive open-ended process of creative possibility. It is painted digitally, but designed to be re-created, in any size, with traditional paint and collage mediums.

It is composed of a variety of layers that I develop, using photographs I take of graphically strong  in everyday life. From organic patterns in nature, to shadows, to light reflections, to man made structures, I am always watching in wonderment at the world around me, looking for captivating forms. I strip the photos down to black & white, extract the desired forms, then re-draw them in my own hand-style, into clean vector-like graphics that can be used as layers. I integrate my own patterns and drawn layers as well.

These paintings direct themselves through trial and error. At the start of a piece, there is no narrative. I collage layers quickly at first, adding, removing, shifting, cutting and pasting, then slower as the piece communicates its preferences and mood. A strong individual identity begins to emerge. I listen and facilitate its becoming until it feels fully realized. At this stage, I take a step back to look at it for awhile before going back in for the final stage, where I take great care in refining it to completion.

It is important that every aspect of a painting cooperate with everything around it. Like a healthy eco-system, there is an overall balance and harmony in the environment.  After a painting is finished, I spend a lot of time contemplating it’s mood, and begin to get a sense of what it is communicating, and a kind of narrative unfolds.

This new body of work seems to be communicating something about how technology is influencing and transforming not only our minds, bodies and lives, but the life of the planet Earth as well. What does it look deep inside our subconscious as we process all this change? How does it look when all this new technology-infused experience crashes, intersects, blends, mixes and merges with our ancient biological human circuitry?

How does our emotional experience, our relationships, our joy and grief, our victories and defeats, effect the colors and shapes that are projected onto the big screen of our conscious mind?

I think abstract shapes and colors are expressive of these very deep mysterious parts of ourselves. Novel shapes and forms break apart, dance and co-exist with harmonious geometric patterns, while color plays important role in defining the emotional tone. It is as if the mind is like an AI engine that produces endless new visual combinations by mixing stored memories with input from the outside world. My work exists as snapshots in this intersection, making visible, these invisible dimensions of our experience.  I use color, shape and scale to communicate my spiritual belief in a mysterious underlying and omnipresent love-based intelligence that generates and sustains all existence across infinite multi-verses. My work is an energetic expression of love and gratitude for this mysterious life force energy.

Computers are a key tool in the creation of my work, so this is technological influence is built in at a DNA level. The process by which my paintings are made is only possible given todays technology and industry. In this regard, my work is of its time, and I love incorporating as many different tools as possible into my creative process. Im excited to explore ways that artists and engineers can join forces to create new tools to spark evolutions  in contemporary art.