Alternate Origins

Much like the manual erosion I apply to a surface before I paint on it, the photograph gives me something to react to. This response later becomes a loose intent at carving out a different kind of realism. It is autonomous not to media's surface or wholly based in this world, but does share some of its visual phenomena. The two dimensional autonomy in traditional non-objective abstraction and expressionism remain in the language of painting (i.e. only a painting could see it as part of its visual resources). My work, however, desires to become the visual manifestations of our memories, dreams and hallucinations, as if the retina could take snapshots in these ethereal circumstances.

The photograph or 3d CG provides the base layer, which can be seen in traces through the other painted layers. It triggers subconscious perceptual recognition of basic visual phenomena. This is used by the other layers to promote the emotive effect of seeing into something that convincingly and potentially exists in this virtual landscape.

Today's viewer has much visual history as paradigms for representational recognition. These are stored in the collective subconscious. We no longer have trouble accepting Renaissance perspectival distortion, Baroque chiaroscuro, Impressionist implications or Expressionist self-referentiation as part of our accepted modes of visual understanding. We are now conditioned to photographic, video and computer imagery as well. Today, we can visually cross-reference these artistic phenomena in a work to draw attention to the seeing process itself.