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THE PROCESS
WITH PIGMENT & PIXELS I CURATE PERCEPTIONS
My artistic style is the culmination of a unique fusion
between traditional mediums and modern artistic practices,
carefully blending centuries-old fine art techniques
with cutting-edge digital methodologies to tell stories.
I blur the lines between mediums, creating an experience so the
viewer is immersed in the story rather than becoming aware of the artistic components. The essence of my work lies in this integration, where technology and traditional techniques converge.
A LIFETIME OF PROCESS
This process page explains some of the ways I have created art. I want to go deeper by showing previous pieces so people can see exactly what I have done. I need a title, a short header which acts as a semi description, and then a description based on the image that will sit next to each artwork. I will go through a timeline of my experiences and my process.
1000 CANDID PHOTOS - 2006 TO 2022
Illustration :
The art of conveying the imagination with a pen.
For as long as I remember I had a natural gift for drawing by hand. Without any real formal training or understanding I was able to accurately create the visual in my mind onto paper and understand how to create perspective, shape and shade.
This ability gave me the confidence to pursue art and continue to test my abilities and mediums because I thoroughly enjoyed creating images that represented my thoughts and imagination.
Fine Art :
Creating a world with painting
Painting was an incredibly fun experience for me and I naturally took to painting with a brush, mixing colour and creating shape and pattern. For some reason I just knew how to compose a visual at first. My technique was not sophisticated and not to a standard that I would have liked at the time, but over years in art school I learned from some of the great painters in modern history, particularly European Renaissance painters. Over four or five years I practised day after day, learning different techniques and trying to master each one. It truly helped me to understand pigments, colour, style, technique and the practical, physical aspects of creating art with paint.
Integrating photos & paint :
The art of a new digital era in 1997.
As I developed my creative skills at college I was drawn towards the computer lab. For some reason I was drawn to a camera which was an RGB camera. You would put a photograph in and it would capture it in three different colours. The photograph would then be loaded into a computer programme, Coral Paint, where I truly found my calling. It felt like a magical experience. I was addicted and fascinated by manipulating pixels and photography even though at the time the technology was in its infancy and basic. I was deeply curious and that curiosity led me to spend almost every single day in that classroom with my graphics teacher, who gave me a key to his office. I would be there from nine o’clock in the morning until nine in the evening studying how to manipulate paint and photography into digital images.
The emergence of Photoshop :
Accidentally discovering a new way to make art.
As I continued to develop my techniques using computers, one day when applying for a graphic design job I spent an afternoon in a public library in front of a computer that happened to have Photoshop on it. By complete coincidence the programme was left open. I spent two hours exploring it and it completely blew my mind because I realised I could enhance, dissect and manipulate images to create any kind of visual I wanted through digital methods. At the time I had no clear idea where digital would be seen or if anything would happen with it, but I was immersed in the idea that at some point in the future everybody would experience the world digitally. That one experience with Photoshop transformed my life.
The beginning of time :
Rewriting the Photoshop Bible.
With my newfound curiosity in Photoshop, and after finding opportunities to get a secondhand computer, I bought the Photoshop Bible. I had a copy of Photoshop even though it was illegal and I began to go through the book. Three years later I had rewritten the book based on my projects, my techniques and my understanding of the processes.
I had my own reference, my own Bible of how I would create visuals, again with no real sense of what would happen to them. I just sensed that this could potentially be something that would allow me to be a free artist.
My first ever mixed media artwork :
I created an aesthetic that was digital and realised I had also created a story, an emotion and something profound. My first real artwork where I intentionally wanted to create something that meant something to me was an image of a woman, a wall, a cage and a flower. These ideas came into my mind through meditation and I simply created. It possibly took six hours to make this piece. I had a photo of the woman, paint, charcoal and paper and I used a scanning machine. I kept drawing, editing and scanning the images over and over, drawing and painting over the photo and manipulating it until I had this powerful art piece. When I looked deeply into it I realised I had created more than just a visual. It was a story. All those years of examining and studying fine art from across the world had sunk into my creative mind so that I was able not just to create an aesthetic but to create a mood and a feeling. I could sense that the woman in the artwork wanted to communicate and express herself, and that was the moment I truly realised the power of art and the power I had been presented with to make people feel something through creative endeavour.
Merging mediums and creating a brand new style :
The world opened up to me as someone who cared deeply about different mediums. I was incredibly excited to see whether I could replicate traditional styles of art using pixels. From pigments to pixels, how could I incorporate everything? The technology was new. I think it was the release of a new folder of software for the hardware, in terms of brand new iMacs. It was not easy to make high definition artwork and then show it, but this was the time when Facebook had just been released. I opened an account and used Facebook as my art gallery. Over a period of a year I had 35 000 to 40 000 people following me, which was incredible. This is where I started to become prolific. I would create six or seven pieces a day and I realised I could merge all the different styles I knew into digital. The speed was incredible and it created some of the best ideas that led to some of my best works.
Hometown dedications :
I started by creating watercolour digital masterpieces of the neighbourhood where I grew up and where I lived. I wanted to be the best artist in my town to begin with. I had an intuition that if I created 12 pieces of art that made people in my neighbourhood feel something by representing locations and spaces familiar to them but presented in an inspiring way, then I could win the hearts and minds of people in my town and begin my journey into sharing and selling art commercially. I created these watercolour pieces using pencil crayons, actual water paint, and I digitally fused them with photography. To this day the technique and execution of this work was phenomenal and I have used the technique many times since.
Adding a three dimensional element to my creativity :
I was fortunate to master 3D modelling applications and learn how to integrate them into my technique. This part of my evolution was incredibly interesting. I was presented with commissions by artists, musicians, actors and television makers who wanted designs and visuals to market their ideas. One close friend who is an incredible musician asked me to create artwork for his album cover. I worked with a gifted 3D animator from Pakistan and together we incorporated 3D modelling into digital art to create an album cover and the creative visuals for the album marketing campaign.
The album was number one in the world charts for over six months, which was an incredible experience. We also exhibited this artwork at the Southbank Theatre in London at the launch of the musician’s concert and projected it onto a huge wall to animate it. That was another step into moving art.
COMBINING 30 MEDIUMS
My work reached a stage where I was proficient at combining traditional techniques with digital. As technology advanced, opportunities to present the art became more available. I was at my most prolific, testing the boundaries of how much depth I could create. I drew inspiration from Renaissance artists, South Indian artists who inspired me and New Age modern American artists. I studied many artists deeply, looking into their worlds, their personalities and the stories they conveyed. This period opened my eyes not just as an artist but as a person. It made me aware that artists who devote their lives to making work often remove themselves from everyday life so they can see the framework and then present it so others can see it. This awareness inspired me to create visuals that were not only aesthetically beautiful but that also told deep stories and used familiar shaped patterns that could be understood universally. As simple as the visuals might appear at first glance, when you go deep into each piece there is so much nuance and detail.
Here are six examples of art pieces that represent this stage of my evolution and the techniques I started to use. The base of each artwork was always the same: I had the idea in my mind, I created the feeling in my heart and I knew how to execute it. It was a matter of merging photography, art, digital illustration and scanning, repeatedly scanning, editing and rescanning, until I finally refined and flattened the image using digital software to print it as a brand new, unique form of artwork. It is unconventional and not traditional, but that is where my imagination took me. I believed that the world would increasingly apply digital aesthetics and applications, and I was correct. That belief gave me confidence. Below are some of the most prolific pieces I have created and the techniques I used to make them appear magical.
ALIGHT CITY :
Tribute to my grandad’s shed
and the industrial tools he displayed on his table.
A Light City was a piece I wanted to create because as a child I would sit in my grandfather’s workshop and he would display all of his engine machinery and bits and pieces he had collected. He was a novice engineer and he liked to tinker. On the table was a display and behind it was a window. It looked like a city, so I was inspired to create this artwork based on his actual tools. I integrated tools and machinery into buildings. I created illustrations of textured walls and materials. I took photographs of engine parts and used 3D animation to develop unusual forms that looked like machinery. The result is a landscape showing a city made of machines and also a reflection of him.
The piece is very detailed. As you go deep into the artwork you can see windows, walls, doors, birds and more. I used everything I could find in his garage after he passed away to create this artwork as a tribute to him. I used about 16 different mediums over eight months to create the piece that is my memory of my grandfather.
MUSIC :
Music is my number one inspiration and when I hear it I create art.
With music it was a case of sitting still and understanding how visual art connects to vibration. When I hear music vibrations that resonate with me, visuals form in my head and I capture them. This particular piece was made without any objective other than to create the feeling of me listening to music. The artwork consists of musical instruments, microphones, speaker systems and anything used to play or listen to music. I broke them apart. I found many images of instruments on an uncle’s computer hard drive. He was a musician and had a warehouse full of instruments, so I photographed many of them and used those images to create this piece. I also integrated other ideas such as feathers and mystical elements to make it a supernatural work.
From afar it looks like a complex engineered bowl of objects, but as you look closer you see a narrative where instruments are integrated to create hybrids that form characters, supernatural entities. When I look at this piece I feel it is alive. It moves in my mind and is part of a beautiful vibration. Combining mediums and implementing a narrative of energy made it energetic.
LOVE EXPERIENCE :
An Intimate Journey into Art and Emotion & the experience of Love.
This piece explores the cycles of love through something familiar in my life. I had a complicated romantic life and this artwork is a seminal piece. It was one of the first works to show several independent artworks within one composition. The Love Experience depicts the seven stages of romantic love, including ego, trauma, excitement, connection, the death of the relationship and the understanding and awareness that comes from healing after a breakup, and then the cycle that repeats. Each part of the composition is an artwork in its own right. I created eight artworks separately to begin with. They were highly detailed, open and full of symbolism, magic and storytelling. There are many hidden messages and optical illusions within each piece. The artwork took two years to create.
Each piece took two or three months to make and I combined them into one mandala composition. I used around 45 to 50 different techniques in this work. It is one of my favourite and most popular pieces. It has a resonance similar to Renaissance art but realised through digital technology, presenting timeless human stories.
AGES :
Different ages of mankind conveyed through a Salvador Dalí style masterpiece
am a big fan of Salvador Dalí and surrealism. At the time I was exploring ways to distort art and convey reality from different perspectives. Ages is probably my best ever artwork because it began with the idea of a hand representing the Earth and several hands above it showing different ages of mankind from agricultural to industrial to technological to spiritual. That was the simple concept, but as I developed the art it took on a life of its own. It was a magnificent experience for me personally. This was my Mona Lisa, the piece I knew would be seminal among the first digital artworks I had created. I knew it could take my practice to another level because the narrative is strong and relevant. I wanted the piece to be captivating, interesting and beautiful, to feel dark and cold at times and warm at others. It should resonate with nature and tell the human story. It has dystopian aspects and also spiritual and mystical qualities, things that could never exist in reality but that can exist in the art. On the computer you could not really see the final effect, but when I printed and framed it at a very large scale it told the story. This artwork still has many lives ahead because the aim is to have it printed or projected at huge scale so you can see all the detail.
The work took about three years to create and used maybe 60 to 70 different creative techniques and layers in Photoshop. For those who know, the piece had up to four and a half thousand layers, which was a nightmare to manage, but it proved I could push the boundaries. The piece was created with a cheap scanner from a secondhand computer shop, a very old broken stylus and a poor illegal copy of Photoshop, which shows it is not the tools but the artist that makes the masterpiece.
HEAD OF STATE :
Two sides of art shown through optical illusion.
Head of State, originally known as Flux, was a commission requested by a friend who has an incredible band. They wanted me to create something that represented creativity, art, flux and machines. At the time I felt vulnerable and was going through a difficult period in my career, so I was drawn to create an artwork that represented how distant and difficult the world can feel. I wanted to show an endless minefield of doors, gatekeepers, people and entities that often prevent artists from being free in the present. In this artwork I consciously created a face within the composition and the face is mine. It captures my anxiety, my stress and my happiness, everything about the industry.
This artwork is probably my favourite ever. The detail is extraordinary and the aesthetic is clean and polished. The colours are unique and everything about it stands out. The piece did not take too long to make. Using the same techniques, about 10 different methods, I created the concepts and executed the work in roughly six weeks out of a period of frustration. I wanted to convey as much as I could. When people look at the artwork I play a game with the audience asking what they see. At first they spot little aspects such as birds, owls, deer, butterflies, machines and many other details. As you move further away the face starts to appear, which creates an interesting experience for viewers. Different people resonate with it in different ways. Looking back I feel I could not replicate something like this and I do not know exactly how I created it.
THE AGE OF AI ... J -AI
Two years from the moment AI applications became available online I created six thousand pieces of art. They explored different stories, themes, ideas and concepts. This marks a new world of storytelling. The strange thing is that now anybody can create images without going through years of training, endurance, uncertainty and practice that other artists have had to endure. With a prompt and a button people can replicate images that previously required deep craft. I never saw this as a threat. I saw it as an opportunity. When technology expands, human consciousness can expand too, which has always been my philosophy. Even if technology can replicate some aspects of what I do, the heart of the artist and the human story behind the art remain integral.
For this phase I used four different AI applications and started to integrate them into Photoshop, then I began to incorporate traditional creativity into the visuals. I effectively generated 30 to 40 iterations of my personal understanding and evolution of art within the experiments I created using AI.
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It was fascinating because I could also ask AI to look at my previous work and use that as a reference to generate new work. Today artworks can be diluted, saturated, edited and reworked. You can walk around a piece, move into it and create multiple ways for people to experience it. I am excited about this era. I am particularly interested in projecting art and making immersive experiences. I am also considering opening up my previous collection of about 4 000 pieces so people can move around the art and become part of the story itself. The immersive experience is another evolution of what has come before. At the end of the day what matters most is the human behind the art and the human in front of the art, the viewer.
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