COPIAS *
COPIAS *
It began with a toy kaleidoscope when I was six years old. i didn’t have language for it but I marveled at the translation of randomness to pattern, AS i RATTLED PLASTIC GEeGAWS in the reflective interior of that cardboard tube. i saw potential to propagate an endless medley of individual blooms but they were fleeting and I wanted to “catch them all”!
in the nineties i found i could, in a photo-editing programme called photoimpact. it had a kaleidoscope filter I could process any of my images with, samples of which are the first three graphics below.
ALSO in the gallery is a progression of scanned marbled-paper-to-needlepoint-design. It’s one of the ways I cultivate and preserve the blooms i perceive, as they spring up in the midst of my kaleidocopious (coin me another term!) ART practice.
from about seven years of age i’ve taken photos of everything that interests me. in my work i usually BEGIN WITH MY OWN IMAGES, BE IT FOR REFERENCE OR AS FOUNDATIONAL elements OF THE NEXT DIGITAL ARTWORK or design. MY PHOTOS ARE MY “GEEGAWS”, TOSSED ABOUT IN MY COMPUTER RATHER THAN PROCESSED THROUGH repeatable “WORKFLOWS”. I ‘shake them up’, extract fragments, combine them, shake them up some more, layer them, elevate some elements and reduce others until a ‘story’ begins tackle my gaze. Then I emphasise and refine the elements further until i’m finished. that is, when the resultant image or object resolves my engagement (which, as with a kaleidoscope is only temporary since each “fleeting bloom” can germinate another blossom). in the images below are the recoloured scan (“photo” of another kind) of the paper i marbled in the above gallery. following, is the story of the introduction of a kaleidoscopic filter, to the zooming in on regions of the flowering forms for A new abstractION, which I then translateD to A needlepoint chart. OR IN THE CASE OF the OTHER PROJECTS herein; pattern repeats, or artefacts and characters for insertion in to surreal digital landscapes. these are some of the ways I express the metaphorical kaleidoscope which is my artistic practice, and revisit that initial ‘child-way-of-seeing’.
