One of the things I’ve been devoting my time to over the last few decades is the pursuit of a medium that can express what is seen behind the eyelids.
I know that sounds like BS but what I mean are the geometric forms and colors a person, or to take it out of passive voice and really own it here, me, sees when slight pressure is applied to the eyes.
These shapes, forms and colors move with the firing of neurons and the outgassing of substances by our rods and cones in our eyeballs.
I have tried painting them and nothing really quite gets to the core of their beauty, geometry, and movement. Most importantly, they are the result of emitted light – not reflected light. They are interior, yet seem to come from somewhere else.
Mandalas and other forms created on a computer or an iPad are almost there. The only problem is it’s impossible to jump into them the same way they seems when they take up your entire field of vision.
I have been interested in this kind of light art for as long as I can remember, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that I pursued it as an art form. I was making collages with highly saturated colored papers, but it still wasn’t what I was looking for,
Eventually, I ended up working tech because of computer graphics, etc. Long story short, here I am full circle. After all these years I can download a complex program to make gorgeous fractals, animations and more.
Is it unreasonable to think that maybe there is a bit of cross-pollination between the two approaches to art. There is art make by hand. All of our marks are present. Our personality is conveyed through the hand.
Then there is art that is untouched by human hands. I am tempted to try to paint one of my fractal compositions, or at least use it as a compositional/color prompt for an oil painting.
To see more of my fractal experiments, visit my Greasy Atoms website. There are animations and all sorts of computer art there.