Mixed Media

"Untitled"
mixed media on canvas

After exploring the creative possibilities with digital photography, there was something else I wanted to try while my urge to paint was starting to come up again experimenting with paint, different mediums, and various materials to create texture.

"Untitled Blue"
mixed media on canvas

"Re-Gifted"
mixed media on canvas

Then after that, I've made the discovery of how I can combine photography into this with photo transferring.

"Phone Booth"
mixed media on canvas

"Road Less Travelled"
mixed media on canvas

"Light Beam"
mixed media on canvas

And it wasn't too long after that when I decided to include tv images and tossed out furniture as the subject matter theme.

"TV Dinner"
mixed media on canvas

"Doorway"
mixed media on canvas

"Bedside Manner"
mixed media on canvas

"Read Between the Lines"
mixed media on canvas

So as I'm posting this some years after,  again this is making me ask myself, "Why haven't I carried on with this?"  Well, maybe I will, eventually because I think I was on to something good, here.  Unfortunately, the way my life is right now it's a struggle to even find the time to put simple blog posts up such as these.  And it's frustrating as hell.  So now it's midnight and I have to get up at 6.  I was wanting to put this up 2 days ago but hey at least I got this little bit accomplished.  The way I've been feeling lately,  I feel it's time for some drastic change of sorts just so I can fulfill my life's purpose and create art, dammit!

The Digital World, Part II: Photography!

Pictures, pictures, pictures.  I've always loved taking pictures. So before ever laying my hands on a digital camera,  I've fiddled around with a 35mm Konica, the lenses, the settings, and all the bells and whistles which I still have lurking around to this day.  Back then, for me it was no trouble at all to be carrying that big old clunky thing around and replacing lenses and adjusting settings.  For me, it was worth it for the end result:

Red Fish II

Plasma

Candle Glow

Air Doodle

And then there was infrared film in which I was not aware of the appropriate settings for so I just went around and casually snapped photos like a tourist:

LocalMotion

Fountain of Youth

Church

Ghost Town

Made of Stone

Ohmmmmm

And of course now in this digital age that we're all so lucky to be in,  with all the effects and developing which took forever to accomplish years ago is made so handy and convenient at our fingertips.  When I first started snapping shots with a digital camera and got introduced to Photoshop I was in my glory while discovering the limitless creative possibilities. And yet, here we have another level of a creative evolution through a (back then) newly discovered media...

Shadowy Stare

Blue Building

Mad Magenta

Pretty Blue Peepers

After geeking out some more (one of my many favourite past times) discovering this new technique which I will call the "selective colour layer blur" effect which I thought was (and still is) a sweet thing to play with:

Sunflower II

Monochromatic

Violet with Yellow

Jellyfish Flower

Poison Daisies

Trouble in Bloom

And of course carrying on, I got happy with the concept of digital replication to form symmetrical
patterns:

Symmatreez

Butterfly

Pansy Mandella

Symmatreez II

DeliciousFictiousRepetition

Mirror Planet

Which reminds me of when I much later experimented with the symmetrical idea into the visuals for this video:

K, now back to photography.  Whether you have a Blackberry, Android, or an iPhone (which I use), with all the gazillion free photo editing and other creative apps there are out there (especially when tired after work but still wanna be creative), Photoshop for iPhone is pretty handy when you want to make basic type of adjustments and add a nice border plus an fx filter if desired.  I also enjoy this one called Instagram where you can use a variety of vintage filters.  These days, when time and energy is scarce having such a handy device with me at all times can be the greatest thing in the world.

Glass Half Full

Tulips

Old Building

Shadow Pop Art

The Digital World.

After a few years while working in the framing industry, I started to get ansy.  Being more and more introduced to the limitlessness of creativity through digital media, I was getting such a high off of tinkering with music, and then of course video was soon to follow.  My thirst for expanding this creativity got so intense to the extent of me enrolling into the Digital Video program at the Art Institute of Vancouver.  Wow talking about taking another giant leap into the unknown!  So here I went and managed to finish it off with GPA of 3.4.  Of course I am not working in any type of film industry type of job at this time but I guess that is probably because having a fine arts background, I prefer to do more artistic independent non-hollywood type of moving visual works:

 

Life Changes...And So Does Art Through Experiences

When I moved back to the mainland, it wasn't easy.  I'll just go as far as to say it wasn't all as expected, but at least I was closer to my family who I'm so thankful for, especially my Dad who has helped me through the difficult transition.  After a couple nightmare jobs, I finally landed onto a job I was comfortable at in picture framing.  Everything just happened so fast.  New job, new apartment, and new relationship.  Although these things happened for the better, it was still an emotional challenge but it all eventually settled nicely.  So when I finally got settled in my new place of residence, I attempted to continue my creative progress from where I left off when I lived in Victoria.

"Splash of Blue"
oil on canvass

"Unfair is Wheel"
oil on canvas

"Something Wicked this way Comes"
oil on canvas

At the time of creating these, I was starting to become bored with my own work because I was just not in the same environment anymore as when I was with my original art peeps back at the island who I went to art college with. And to this day, I still miss them all but we still keep in touch now thanks to Facebook. :)

Blast from the Past (a brief history)

They say that if you don't know your past, you don't know your future.

Hello and let me introduce myself.  All my life I have (and still do) have sought ways of expressing myself through a variety of creative media such as drawing, painting, sculpting, music making.......you name it.  It all started while growing up, I used to watch arts and crafts programs on TV while trying to make those creations myself.  To give you some idea, at the age of five trying to create a picturesque landscape with my kid quality watercolour paintings on paper were nothing like what you see of Bob Ross.  *lol*  Perhaps I discovered at an early age that no matter how hard you try to make something become exactly the same as whatever you're trying to "copy", it'll never be quite the same because it's a part of you going into the creation.  This however was an extreme example, but of course I didn't know it at the time at such a young age.  But for the most part, imagination has always (and still is) my best friend.  And that is probably why when I create something, I prefer to dig deep down into my own psyche and see what comes out.

Growing up, and all through school, all I mainly cared about was anything to do with the arts.  In my later years of highschool, towards graduation, I've discovered my inexplicable love for the surrealist movement when I first laid eyes on the works of Magritte and Dahli.  And of course ever since then I've become influenced with the surrealist style which is shown in alot of my 2D paintings.

"Waiting Room"
acrylic on canvas

"Untitled Red"
acrylic on canvas

Between highschool graduation and getting into art college, I began painting on canvas for the first time with acrylic.  Then when I finally moved out and ventured out on my own, here are just a few of the paintings (including the one above) which I brought to get accepted into the Victoria College of Art back in 1998:

"Untitled Abstract"
acrylic on canvas

"Shack on the HIll"
acrylic on canvas

"Playground at Night"
acrylic on canvas

"Are you a moody person?"  was one of the questions I was asked at the interview to get into the art college.  I can't remember exactly what my response to that was but without denial ,I just smiled and shrugged, anyway so ...

My time spent at the Victoria College of Art was one of the most valuable experiences I've ever had.  During those 3 years I was really able to begin to tap right down into the primal core of my whole artistic existence.  Then it all just kinda blossomed from there.

*Might I add, that as I am putting this together, finding my old archives, digging through my closet and posting them on here is taking me way way back.  I feel like I've just opened up a real time capsule and quite honestly this is a very trippy experience for me.  Perhaps this is just what I needed to do in order to finally get out of my dry spell.

So anyway,  here are just some of the things I've come across to give you an idea of my creative progress during my time at the art college (in a slightly chronological order):

"Still Life"
oil on cardboard

"First Leaf"
oil on cardboard

"Candle"
oil on cardboard

"the Homecoming"
oil on canvas

"The Homecoming" was just the beginning of a big segment of my personal style and subject matter when it came to painting.  Although in the next year with my discovery of new styles, approaches, and techniques, alot of my work started to become more monochromatic, yet cubist which is another style I became addicted to.  Here are only a couple examples I could dig up:

"Untitled"
graphite on paper

"Sci-Fi"
chalk pastel on black paper

And then later while given the liberty of taking what I've gathered so far, here's what I came up with:

"Big Brother"
Oil on Canvas

"Table 41"
oil on canvas

"Untitled"
oil on canvas

"Time Traveller"
Oil on Canvas

In the midst of a move from the island to the main land, with no time to retrieve the first three paintings, I have no clue as to where they are today.  It was that hectic of a move and sometimes things just happen that way.  They could be anywhere.  However, I did sell "Time Traveller" to a couple to put in their vacation home in Victoria, sans chair.  As I recall, while in the process of painting these, I was in such an other worldly trance which was a happy place for me to be even though painting those stairs occasionally became tedious but the end result was rewarding enough to make it all worth while.

And last but not least to wrap up this introductory post, here's a few more pics of some pieces I did which were held at an independent group showing involving alumni from the art college.  And yet, another phase of style which also resembles a wee bit of the past so far.  I guess it just goes to show history repeats itself in some way.  It was also very handy to have been working in the picture framing industry then, too.

"White Abstract"
chalk pastel on black paper

"Blue Abstract"
chalk pastel on black paper

"Red Abstract"
chalk pastel on black paper

At the show, somebody who has been a fan of my "stair" paintings came up to me with concern and said "you've changed!"  Well no, I didn't really change.  This was just the beginning of a new adventure.