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'Folded paper structures with multiple light sources' is the look that I am going for in my current work.
I've always enjoyed art as far back as I can remember but from about the age of ten (1980) I started noticing how paintings with curved/rounded subjects such as apples,oranges or portraits all looked flatter and less three dimensional than angular subjects with hard edges like tables,chairs and boxes for example. I also noticed how detail added to various subjects, such as leaves on a tree for example, often made the painting appear flatter too. These concepts really intrigued me and a few years later at art college (1990's) it became the central focus in my work figuring out how to create or preserve a sense of depth and structure with these trickier 'flatter' subjects. After testing out lots of ideas, mostly in sketchbooks, eventually I developed a geometric style (1993) where everything appeared as boxlike or angled planes + used a narrow isometric perspective that helped everything link together nicely. Constantly updating this theme, every so often I made breakthroughs such as (2008) when I began opening up or 'unfolding' these boxlike shapes. This resulted in a more delicate 'folded paper' look that I preferred. I also added patterns,logos + labels more often to imitate printed paper. Then I switched entirely to mixed media for a while (2009) using paper instead of paint. The following year a maths theory 'combinatorics' in a science journal helped enable another step closer to abstraction. Lighting had always fascinated me especially from artificial sources like shop fronts, traffic signals or giant led screens. As I moved away from observational themes (2012) though I no longer had a reference point to study and copy from. So I decided to treat lighting with the same thought process as when I was creating CG animation work a few years prior to my painting. This involved thinking about the physics of lighting much more, using concepts like global illumination, radiosity, caustic lighting, light/colour bounce, ray traced shadows, volumetric lighting + how certain materials reacted to lighting too especially translucency...all these things that I loved learning about in CG and now began transferring across to my painting, so that the canvas appeared as if it had 'multiple light sources'. Discovering kirigami (2015) then gave me the idea to use the 'cutout shapes' theme which helped resolve various depth/balance issues by being able to see through foreground shapes to other layers in the background. 'Paired shapes' (2019) was another step that made compositions easier to read + appear more 'modular' as if they were assembled from a kit which I liked. Currently (2025) I'm working on new volumetric lighting ideas placing cloud formations among these folded paper structures. 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, China was another great influence with the mix of old and new street scenes, incredibly tall buildings disappearing into low clouds + 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 high street for example that keep providing ideas for future work.
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