| These images are the result of the perfection of symmetry. They do not aspire
to be anything but what they are. These are reflections of thought processes,
getting nearer and nearer to objects of desire. I see them as mandalas,
jewels, recursive images by mirrors, hypnotic baubles. To look at them is
like looking into flames, or the Aurora Borealis, rainbows, plants, freaks
of nature, crystallogrpahy, magnified pollen. They have created themselves,
I have only been the catalyst in their creation. For me, they are exquisite
things of beauty, brought about by the mathematics of symmetry, fractals
and procedural texture application. I have deliberately used no photograph or reference to any living thing or inanimate object, natural or man made in these crystal images. They have been created by Deus ex Machina, with guidance from me, in a state where I feel drawn nearer to their ultimate perfection. Some of these artifacts will appear sublime, others will appear hellish and almost be the creation of demons, or demonic consiousness. Is this the product of the image, or is it what my deeper psyche has been drawn into? Are these mirrors of my mind at the time, being allowed to develop through my selection? It is the choosing that involves the subconsious creative purpose. I have not let the skill of my hand intervene in their development, only what form I desire next. I sit for hours, honing the outcome of these symetries. Many images will be discarded in the search for new perfection. For me, they are like jewels and flowers in an ever changing universe, I help to craft them with a new medium that I find suitable for my expression. What is my pleasure in this art is that I can continue crafting these images, without end, without hindrance, and everyone of them will be different. To have created these effects years back, would have taken days and weeks, and would still look like they had been done by hand, to create them by photography would have been almost impossible, or taken weeks of experimentation in the darkroom. The only works near to these would have been stained glass windows, Tibetan mandalas, some jewellry, microphotographs of nature, pollens, spores and diatoms. It is like having a kaleidoscope in which we have ultimate control, or lava lamps and light shows in which we can perfect the images. One may ask the old chestnut, but "is it art?" I for one, do not really care, I do know that we can take pleasure from looking at these images, perhaps it is an "ambient" art and can be enjoyed in the same way as some of us enjoy "ambient music" for its meditative and hypnotic qualities. So may that be. It is the new art of the computer age, which is introspective, and can create anything the imagination desires. On the other hand, the "Temple" image, which is used for accessing the relics or mandalas, is a 3d rendered image, using the electronic medium to create surrealistic impossibilities. Would Magritte have used a computer to have generated even more phantasmagoria than he did or was painting them more of an enjoyment to him? Of course, he was a product of his age. |
This image has been carefully constructed and rendered, choosing ambience
and textures to create the atmosphere of a world long gone, yet preserved
in a still, glass-like ocean. Contemporary art has now dried up most of
its orginal ideas and fire, PostModernism creates pastiche, skits and commentary
on what is past, and sometimes what is about to be. The age of Electronic
art is nigh, many of its artists not yet well known, but a similarity in
many of their works can be seen. It is sometimes a composite of medieval
symbolism combined with surrealism. Some of this art has a painterly feel,
in which images have been painted, using the hand and the mouse, some artifacts,
partially generated by 3d renderings, collages of old and new images combining
to reckon with the coming of the Third Millennium. Artists are now looking
to the distant (unknowable) past for inspiration, and the future, likewise,
unknowable. they look for art in tokens, talismans, shamanism and in folkloric
traditions which are struggling to survive in the dominant culture of Western
Materialsm, a culture where the search for pleasure, perfection and beauty
has become confused with commerce, in a way which it has never been before.
Artists who are tired of being told what they should do, what is trendy, what the cult is of today, what fad they must follow, can now sit alone at their computer, and not worry about creating art to the dictates of agencies, galleries and the like. They are happy to display their works on the ether, "take it or leave it," they say. They may be full time artists, painters discovering a new medium, graphic designers, illustrators, computer engineers, geophysisists, musicians and office clerks, but they have this unique chance to say, this is what I do, it is mine, no-one has comissioned this. Here it is for the world to see. Cybergraffitti, but diverse as the people who make this art and as yet are under no peer pressure. My background has been in graphic design and illustration, also in technical drawing. I worked a skilled retoucher and illustrator, and enjoyed producing meticulous technical work. Discovering the airbrush opened many possibilities. I am a vivid dreamer, but felt that I could never express what I wanted too because of the slowness of all these media. My energy was sapped having to work in day to day jobs such as magazine work, technical illustration, plan drafting and the like, including night school, both time and finances being required to develop as a competent surrealistic painter. Even though I am more than capable of hand illustration, using a digitisng tablet, rather than a mouse, I feel that I cannot touch the pristine qualities of these particular images by using my own signature on them. I would like them to speak for themselves. Hilary Rhodes, January, 1996 |
