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Folded paper structures with multiple light sources is the look that I am going for in my current work.
My interest in the 'structure' part began during an art lesson at primary school. We all painted our names on paper as an art exercise and one pupil created a 3d edge to the letters. I found this idea fascinating seeing how depth and structure could be created in a painting from this technique. A few years later at art college this 'structure/depth' theme became my main focus and after a lot more sketchbook work I developed a geometric style (1993) where all my figurative and landscape subjects appeared as boxlike or angled planes. I also chose an isometric perspective view which seemed to work best with this angular style. Constantly updating this theme, I made various breakthroughs such as (2008) when I began opening up or 'unfolding' these boxlike shapes. This resulted in a new lighter feel to the paintings that I preferred and it was the start of the ‘folded paper’ look. I also used patterns more often to imitate printed paper and then switched entirely to mixed media for a while (2009) where all of my work was made from cut out paper. A maths theory in a science journal at the time then gave me the idea of completely rearranging + mixing figurative and landscape elements together (2010) so that people appeared as vast buildings with their clothing colours matching the brickwork and so on. Lighting had been an interest for many years and as I moved further away from observational subjects (2012) and towards geometric abstraction I started using physics based lighting ideas and knowledge that I had learned about during my CG TV animation work. This included concepts like global illumination, radiosity, caustic lighting, light/colour bounce, ray traced shadows, volumetric lighting...subjects I loved learning about in CG and now began transferring across to my painting, adding imaginary 'multiple light sources' to different areas of the canvas. 'Cutout shapes' (2015) inspired by Kirigami has helped with depth/balance issues by being able to see through to the various layers in the background and 'Paired shapes' (2019) is helping clarify the compositions visually + make the paintings appear more 'modular' as if they are assembled from a kit which I like. In terms of inspiration, firstly there are numerous artists in different galleries around the world and online whose work I study, enjoy and learn from. Then there are themes like shop/cafe/hotel/restaurant/pub awnings + umbrellas that often appear in my early work as I've always loved their simple 3d canopy designs. Trees/nature is another big influence with the incredible array of designs, colours, textures, leaf/flower translucent properties, different seasons/weather conditions, lighting and so on. Then there's the digital art world and after 10+ years experience creating cg work, I still avidly follow all the developments happening at the moment like Unreal Engine 5.6, 'Lumen', 'Nanite' + 'Megalights' + Nvidia 'RTX mega geometry', all of which I find fascinating + keep learning from. Modular design ie flat pack furniture with the mathematical design instructions. Lego products especially their Ninjago range + Japanese culture with Origami, Kirigami, Chiyogami, Transformers and Gunpla robots. My residency with Andrew James Art in Shanghai was another great influence - the mix of old and new street scenes, incredibly tall buildings disappearing into low clouds and their thousands of lights mixing with the hazy dusk atmospheres. Finally there's the random day to day stuff like a packaging design in a supermarket or brightly coloured interlocking plastic barriers on a construction site for example that keep providing ideas for future work.
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