This gallery contains the series I call "Monsters From the Id", the first non-photo based digital work I did in the Mid ′90s. The images are all freeform shape and texture creations using Photoshop v.2 and v.3 with a slew of plug-ins and "chops". I just wanted to see what could be done by distorting isolated textures on a 2D surface so they appear to be dimensional. This is of course what lead me to the 3D applications I use now. The pieces themselves are often named after things I was just learning to cope with on the computer like device drivers and scsi chains. I just let things happen and the heads and skulls flowed out of me like automatic writing. The name of the series hence comes from a George Pal movie called Forbidden Planet in which one of the characters creates monsters to do the bidding of his primitive side using a piece of alien technology. Like that alien technology, my computer released the demons of my torments in the form of pixels and light. I have printed these images as an open-ended series on various digital to photographic print technologies and especially like the results on glossy photo style papers. The colors of these images are super saturated and intense and deserve a glossy print to show this off.
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The pieces in this gallery are smaller works, sketches to try out new ideas either in software or as a concept. Sometimes they lead to a larger work, but often they stand alone. I usually print them open ended at about 5X7 image size. I still output on fine art paper with archival inks like my larger prints.
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As you have seen in the previous galleries much of my artwork draws fanciful comparisons between ancient and modern views of reality, religion and physics. Since my move to a rural environment I have pondered the direction of my work and so I have begun to create character studies. Each one seems to be an amalgam of many people I know or have met. So far, these characters have fallen into three earlier bodies of work: Angry Little Men, Feral Dumb Men, and recently, Click, Bang, You′re Dead.
Angry Little Men explores the countenances and stances of men with an attitude and a grudge. Some how their due has not been met and they mean to change that very soon.
Feral Dumb Men looks at men in pain with some great, unexplained loss. They are mouth breathers in a daze or so deep in the denial of their pain that they seem giddy. These are composed in the style of the German Expressionist Film with the subject in close up, staring directly at the viewer.
The Click, Bang series is populated by threats of imminent death coming when you least expect it. More to come in that series.
I have now begun a series of portraits of women and couples. These vignettes capture snap-shot-like moments of self-doubt, embarrassment, and frustration not soon to be resolved.
All of my subjects have been stripped of the viewer′s self-imposed tyranny of what is beautiful. One must look at them, in the eye, and see them for who they are.
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