About me: Philosophy

I try not to over intellectualise my work and rely on a largely instinctive approach to its creation.
I do like to think about how my work is used and the information in this page looks at how I react to the work I create and the work I see by other artists.

Art as a tool

The viewing of art can be compared to the use of a tool.

I find is useful to take a slightly detached approach to my thoughts on art. Almost always I like to think of artwork as a tool by which people affect the ideas and perceptions they have of the world around them and themselves.
We all have our own perspective on the world, which is shaped from a combination of our physical and genetic heritage and our experiences and learnings, all of this affects the final product: the art experience.

Art is nothing

On its own art is a collection of lines and marks on a sheet of paper, a collection of objects, certainly works of art have little material value, the value of art is in the eye of the beholder. The prices gained by artworks are a result of their ability to pull a crowd, this often occurs when people load art with information from outside.
A good example of this is Leonardo da Vinci's Last supper painted in 1498 the man who commissioned this work intended it to decorate his wall, show of his wealth and demonstrate his religious veneration, fro Da Vinci it was a chance to earn some cash and practice and further his art, many Da Vinci scholars consider whether he had much religious faith, in fact some go to far as to say that, for his time, he was pretty close to being an atheist.
With the creation of a best-selling book and popular film the painting, which, in physical terms, is little more than a collection of temperas pigments and flaking plaster, has been informed by information that makes use of its visual obscurity and symbolic simplicity to become a secret and religious conspiracy code.

Number banner 7 on white arrow with text. This work makes use of obscurity and anonymity. You can project your own values upon the number banner and attempt to translate the arrow motion as you wish. Despite looking authoritative this installation is obscure and lacking actual value - things that only the viewer can provide.

Being symbolically obscure is very useful in art, it allows the viewer to inform what they see with their own personality and prejudices, the saying that we all see what we want to see is partly true, it should also be remembered that, to a great extent, we are programmed by the world we live in. Advertisers know this and so try to lock into the visual knowledge that our brain contain, artists know it and try to use their own visual knowledge to communicate with themselves and viewers in a way that is not possible in writing, music, talking or any other medium.

We all see something different

Those of us that have an interest in art history look to books to try and get a feel for what the artist originally intended us to see, though often I feel this is a futile search. How can we seek to find what eluded the artist? art is art, a work of art can stand alone and just be what it is, something that can only be communicated by its the medium it is in. If it were possible to write what art is it wouldn't be necessary to make it we could just use words... like these.

Want to read more?...

I've written a book. You can buy a copy through Lulu.com for £9.
It's full of images of my work, the things I've discovered and considered while making my work and my opinions on the world my work inhabits. Read more...