Personal VS Professional Work pt. 2 Art & Thoughts Feb-Mar 2019
“The medium is the message” Marshall McLuhan
Thoughts as of lately. I’ll agree, but I’ll also add that now we are all the medium, and the message is ever evolving — in this digital age, the different mediums and means of expression continue to blend further and further. This not only blends the boundaries but creates new categories between.
I began this life-long journey with visual art through the pencil and paper. I applaud my parents at my young age for instantly recognizing that there was something worth exploring. And so began art classes and projects in all mediums from pencil to watercolour, charcoals, and oils for years to come.
Fast forward 30 years, and what I didn’t realize until very recently is that I had lost some of that connectedness through the mediums that I currently work in. Photography and videography filtered through digital software can convey the possibilities of all mediums, acting like viewfinders for anything that is creatively possible and recorded in any shape and form. But I lost some vague sense of play without that physical stick of charcoal in my hand. I’ve been exploring and playing in the digital realm, but without a real tactile sense of the mediums I was mimicking.
How this can be solved with a piece of glass, some metal, and a little Bluetooth thrown in for good measure has been quite a surprise.
A few weeks ago an iPad pro and apple pencil joined the family. I’ve been exploring new ways to integrate it into my projects, but it’s also created a new twist in the journey since they’ve rekindled that sense of physical interaction. It’s still software, and it’s still only mimicking physical medium, but merely gripping the tool in hand and seeing the flow of paint from the stroke bridges major gaps between those worlds.
For the first time in a long time I’m sketching, painting, and tapping into parts of my brain that went unused for years. But it took this new medium to even realize they had gone quiet.
Some explorations and tests with new digital mediums. Fragmented self portraiture teasing like a puzzle in progress.
Evan 03-18-19