THE DIGITAL ARTS

Summer Cover Image: Spring '95

by Bob Griffin

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Among the works I've completed over the past decade are three large paintings that feature a central spring or coil. Spring '95, on the cover, is a realization of this motif through digital media.

Though the greater part of my output falls within the category of painting, I have never had any philosophical qualms about using any tool available for artistic expression. Indeed, for my own work, the computer is a natural outgrowth of the direction the painting was taking. Increasingly, my paintings have tended to multiply illusion and optical effects, even to the point of causing doubt in many viewers that they were realized in painted media at all. Recently, I have furthered this ambiguity by employing liquid photographic emulsion in combination with painting, as well as by painting on tiled computer printouts mounted on wood. The cover image, created in Alias Sketch and modified in Adobe PhotoShop, is destined for similar treatment.

Admittedly, my approach to art-making is somewhat over-the-top. Tension and instability are key ingredients for visual impact. For example, I exploit the computer's strangely precise rendering capabilities, and then undermine the clarity of the image by importing optical or conflicting surfaces. I feel the work to be the most successful when the fight between cohesion and dissolution, seduction and denial, reach a fevered pitch. In many ways I subscribe to Andre Breton's dictum that beauty should be convulsive or not at all.

Posted 14 November 1995. Revised 10 July 2007.