When preparing for an art exhibit, part of the process includes developing an artist statement. This one page document will be on display at the art exhibit and will be treated as a way for you to introduce your friends and fans to your work and to your show. Every show is different and things change for an artist from one show to another. That is why each artist statement is different. I had, in 2008, seven different gallery exhibits but I only developed an artist statement for my last two shows. This statement, for my show at Gallery 7 located at the Pike Performing Arts Center, is the most detailed and developed that I came up with. Just as the art work is unique and abstract, so is the artist statement. I thanked those involved and also gave a touch of my own personality to it, but in the end all that I tried to accomplish was saying thank you for the chance to show my work to the general public. The full artist statement is listed below.
When I began my career as a graphic designer I had no idea the scope of projects that I would be working on. The projects, both freelance and school related, ranged from brochure designs, custom t-shirts, and logo development all the way to website design and layout management. While working on these projects and honing my skills as a designer, I learned many valuable lessons on what it takes to be competitive in such a harsh market. Keeping up with current design standards in color theory, font choices, layout design, and in the software I use is something that I pride myself on as designer and as a professional.
But as a graphic designer, no matter how often your style changes, no matter how many projects that you are given, in the end a logo design is still a logo design. It was not that I was getting bored with design, but rather that I was beginning to not challenge myself as an artist. So one night while sharing a glass of wine with some friends I opened up Macromedia Freehand. This is a vector-based software. That means that all work created in this program is based on mathematics, not pixels. So imagine that I created a stamp in a vector software program such as Freehand. I could take that stamp and blow it up to the size of a billboard and it would not lose its original resolution. The program itself is actually unable to be purchased as Adobe recently bought out Macromedia. However it is still one of my favorite software packages to work in.
So I opened Freehand and began playing around with some random and off the wall color palettes. After creating all of these little boxes, all ranging in size, I wanted to create an entire page with these colors. So I grabbed what I thought was the selection tool and pulled each box to the bottom of the page to fill the screen with color. The result, which was a mistake on my original idea, actually turned out better than I had expected. I kept the piece and started on the path as a digital abstract artist. The title of that first piece is Digital Drip, and it is one of my favorite pieces in my collection.
I start the process by taking an image, idea, or concept and look deeper into the true meaning behind it. Once I have gathered my initial thought on how to recreate that vision in my head, I will then grab some random colors and begin creating either a complimentary or completely opposite color structure. You can see this process throughout my work.
After each piece is created I save the project and then forget about it. I will just let it sit for a few days before going back to look at the finished product. I have over two hundreds pieces in my collection to date and I would venture to say that for every piece that I keep in my collection I throw away five more that I have created. This is sometimes discouraging to me, as an artist, but allows for my mind to stay on top of the creative curve.
As you look at my work I want you to have no clue what you are looking at. I want you confused as to why you are even viewing this art and then I want you to ask questions. Where did this come from? What is it? How did he manage to create those lines and decide on these colors? The more questions you have about my art the more effective I feel that piece actually is. My passion lies behind graphics and art. This is just a culmination of both.
