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I am switching gears for my project. I’ve decided that instead of painting my digitally collaged chance-operations-still-life, I will be making digitally collaged and manipulated self-portraits. My concept is honestly not too much different, just more personal and geared towards mental health while still maintaining surrealism and presenting a bridge between technology and painting. After getting my images put together on Adobe Photoshop, I feel much more confident in my project with the switch, and I think paintings will be striking as well as employing a sense of vulnerability.

Below are the images I’ve crafted so far (and I aim to paint three in total):

Continuity and framing are what I paid most attention to in digitally collaging this photo

This collage has more emphasis on photoshop layering and blending options

The process for creating these digital collages are essentially the same as I last proposed, except instead of using a still life that I crafted, I’ve utilized some self portrait photos I took of myself two years ago. I really love that I’m still able to implement a sense of surrealism, but another reason for my motivation behind switching project concepts was my emotional disconnect from the still life and compositions I had made. These two collages feel much more intriguing and emotional, and the effects I utilized in manipulation of the photos were mainly experimental and unplanned. I think as paintings, these images will not just please aesthetically, but also successfully bring together the worlds of technology and art on to the same plane.

I have already begun sketching the compositions onto canvases, as seen here:

They look pretty strange without color, but I think as I begin these two paintings in sync, I will digitally collage two more images, and choose the my favorite of the two to make my third painting. And, hey, if I have time, maybe I’ll do a fourth.

Some ideas of digital distortion + collage. I think from here these images need more experimentation, but they do express my goal of utilizing the still life and photoshop to digitally manipulate and distort.

My ideas and research for this project have truly been all over the place. My final proposal for this project is to craft a surreal object still life, alter it digitally with photoshop adding elements of digital collage, and then paint in the physical. The beginnings of the physical form of my still life are shown here as well. Over the course of studying surrealism and our human connection to one another as affected by technology, I’ve some recorded thoughts alongside sources I found useful for the topic of technology and painting, and journaled:

I just google searched “contemporary figure painters” and found the most fascinating article by The Artlington. They listed five contemporary figure painters and among them I took an extreme liking to Xian Tao.

I am so intrigued and interested in emphasizing the combination of technology and traditional painting. In Xian Tao’s work, a satiating balance between organic shape and minimal yet electrifying color palette strikes a chord in me.

Upon further googling, I found another painting by Tao that I admire even more:

I love the introduction of a little representational style, and I can find myself toying with painting ideas inspired by this one as realism is often a strong element in my work. That’s not to say I don’t love the colors either; the combinations of these ever so slightly muted hues remain a little jarring and edgy, and I love how they serve as more contours for the figure itself.

These paintings are similar in concept to a work I made over the summer in the Special Topics Course: How Social Distancing Affects Art. Titled Fill the Void, my acrylic 18”x 25” painting depicts a collage that I digitally composed and then painted.

My piece features some splitting of layers and light, which gives an interesting implication of a light diffraction or glitch. I really enjoyed making this piece, which is why I’d love to focus on the expression of the organic in context of technological/virtual space.

In my research, I have found an article titled “Surface, Image, Reception: Painting in a Digital Age” by RHIZOME, and although lengthy, provides some specific, complex, and poignant ideas on the matter. It starts with an image and a quote I can hardly get over:

“Rather than initiating the death of painting, as was expected, photography and other media of mechanical reproduction have been like a vampire’s kiss that makes painting immortal. Painting is enthralled before the cold eye of mechanical reproduction and can stare back in the same way.”

—David Reed, 2006

At points, the article gets lengthy and convoluted, but I am really drawn to the point made here by David Reed – the collision of the painting world and the technological revolution generate a big bang of new creative liberation. As combined mediums, the works made in this current digital era moving forward take an art form that I think is relatively alien, new and shiny to my artist self (particularly during this time of pandemic where human reliance on technology is greater than ever before in human history). Another passage from this article that expresses the artist’s eagerness to experiment with the virtual and technology as a medium:

“When artist Michael Staniak says, “the screen is as normal a part of my day-to-day life as eating,” he is not only speaking about the conditions that inform his paintings, but also about a nearly universal situation among a certain class in the developed world—an incredibly profound one that has opened up painting, especially in its abstract guise, to an entirely new audience that lacks, indeed does not need, an education or background in the critical and formal examination of art and its history. This has led to fundamental changes in the way a painting looks, communicates, and circulates, which has in turn attracted a new, younger generation of artists who approach the medium differently than their historical antecedents, deploying it to varied ends. In a quiet but incredibly profound way they have rebuilt painting from the ground up.”

With everything in mind, I’ve decided that I must allow chance operations a hand in creating this piece to push my goal of surrealism and maintain a level of objectivity. The next step is to alter an image of my still life digitally, and then paint onto canvas with acrylic paints.