06 - Figurative digital art painting
06a - Associated abstract digital art painting
Artist’s Statement
During 2019, I created an art book entitled Conversations. It sprang from a series of photographs I took over the last several years when I noticed two or more people engaging in what appeared to me to be an interesting type of conversation. The facial expressions and body language of the participants, for the most part, told the story. Hearing the word flow didn’t seem necessary to me. Perhaps, not hearing the words spoken allowed for a more accurate read as to the true meaning of the conversation.
Of particular interest to me was the fact that those pictures reflected conversations that seemed to go beyond mere talking. There seemed to be a more intense connection between most of the participants. And reflecting upon that distinction provided me with the inspiration for writing an included poem also entitled, “Conversations.”
The art book was accepted for inclusion in The Art Institute of Chicago Ryerson Library collection.
I used my photographs as a starting point in creating the digital art which is the subject matter of the book. Often, when embarking on a project, one thing leads to another. In the process of digitally painting the pictures which have remained figuratively recognizable, some of my interim work flow started to evolve into a form of abstract art. And because I am interested in abstract art, I became sidetracked and read a book which focused on abstract art published in 2016 which I had intended to read, entitled Reductionism in Art and Brain Science “Bridging The Two Cultures” by Eric R. Kandel. He is a Professor at Columbia University and a Nobel Prize winner.
After reading the book, I decided to create an associated abstract digital art painting for each figurative picture. According to Professor Kandel, “abstract paintings, with their lack of figuration, activate the brain very differently than figurative paintings do.” (p. 141) An abstract image presents a greater challenge to the viewer’s eye and mind, and places greater demands on the viewer’s imagination than figurative paintings do. In short, abstract images will capture your attention faster because humans are hard-wired to quickly make sense out of what they see. It’s part of our survival instinct.
However, the process of making sense out of what we see is not an entirely objective process common to all with normal eyesight. Instead, it’s an individual experience based on the viewer’s personal retained and interpreted prior experiences referred to as top-down processing. What we actually intake is raw visual somewhat simple stimuli referred to as bottom-up processing which is then individually interpreted by our brains into a recognized form via top-down processing. So, when we view abstract art, it “subverts the innate rules of perception and relies more extensively on top-down information than does figurative art.” (p. 22) In other words, in the case of any particular piece of abstract art, a viewer probably doesn’t have any learned visual associations that can be applied to its interpretation as opposed to abundant learned visual associations relative to figurative art.
In the book, I placed each associated abstract digital art painting immediately after the figurative digital art painting. If you view the abstract art first, even though it’s associated with a figurative art painting, you will view it somewhat differently than if you first looked at the figurative art painting and thereby had some framework of reference as to color, shape(s), etc. If you view the figurative art paintings first, you will be able to more easily associate the abstract art with the figurative art, even if they aren’t side by side.
Above and below are a few selected figurative digital art paintings and their associated abstract paintings.
02
02a
03
03a
13
13a
14
14a