Co-Creative Art
Gazing into my abstract paintings involves collapsing the possibilities of a semi-formless chaos into an interpretation. The complex yet indistinct shapes, colours, and textures invite the imagination to take part in the painting. This co-creative style of abstraction acknowledges and draws out the creator from within the observer.
Like the Rorschach inkblot test, my images can be used to facilitate a mild form of conscious visualization known as pareidolia. The viewer supplies the content and meaning of what is discovered in these dynamic playgrounds. This inbuilt subjectivity allows one painting to appear differently to a multitude of viewers, functioning in part as a kind of subconscious mirror.
In quantum theory, particles may exist in more than one state when no one is looking at them; curiously, my paintings exist in multiple states especially when people are looking at them. A group of people reported seeing the following images in the painting below:
a whale with a blue-green eye
an elephant
a lady dressed in pink holding a scepter
a robot dog
a lion’s nose
a mountain landscape
an elderly man with long hair
a skull
a fish blowing bubbles, waves
a pair of children
Note: not everyone will visualize, nor is it the point of my art. Complex abstract imagery is a playground for the mind, and visualization is one of many games people enjoy
Topographical Detail
Surface details of abstract paintings can be difficult to discern from photographs. Colours and outlines tend to dominate in flattened images.
People often approach original artworks from multiple angles, gleaning all of the intriguing surface details through the play of light and shadow. Brushstrokes, textures, patinas, metals, iridescence and height-variations are a landscape for the eyes to enjoy. Topographical details can provide additional layers of expression by incorporating the human sense of touch.
Many museums today are creating topographically accurate reproductions of well-known paintings using 3D scanning and printing.
#151, topographical detail
#940, topographical detail
Visual Jazz
First and foremost, abstract painting is improvisation to me: visual jazz, play, being absorbed in the moment, expressing directly. Painting is also meditation: becoming quiet and still inside, following a flow, letting it guide me. Like dreaming, grand narratives unfold in the absence of logical thought.
Seeing Light: Translucency
Many flowers and foliage are partially translucent; in addition to reflecting sunlight, they are illuminated by light as it passes through them.
The beauty of light passing through semitransparent objects is everywhere in daily life: fruits, jams and jellies, juices and syrups, wine and spirits, tea, soft drinks, candy, glass, jewellery, plastics, and some fabrics.
Stained glass windows are an artistic exploration of translucency, as are many of my paintings; indeed,when viewed on modern bright computer screens, my artwork is illuminated in much the same manner.
Landscape of the Cosmos?
The current map of the universe is a web of galactic superclusters (left). Laniakea means "immeasurable heaven" in Hawaiian, and is the name given by astronomers to our local supercluster.
My artwork (right) is sometimes described as a landscape/shan shui on a cosmic scale.
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