August 6 – 17, 2003
My current work focuses on the boundaries between traditional painting and digital imagery. The series of paintings in this exhibit reveal a union of old and new through the use of classic imagery and digital manipulation.
My process begins with scanning images from Art History textbooks and reworking them in Photoshop. These new images then become the source for my paintings.
The canvases for the paintings possess a coloured ground, which is also influenced by new technologies. The coloured ground is known as “Chroma Key blue”, most often used in modern filmmaking in order to digitally manipulate a scene by matting out the blue background and substituting in whatever fabricated background is desired.
My primary interest in this hue is the complete artificial nature of the colour: it is an entirely new colour that cannot be duplicated by using traditional oil paints. Juxtaposing a middle-tone gray with this artificial ground gives the paintings an optical effect of shimmering and dancing.
The impact of the work is increased by the manipulation of the recognizable images from Art History. The digital changes offer a new look at an established aesthetic.
