As an artist, looking and seeing, and feeling as much detail as the world offers is one of the great joys of my life. Sadly, I fear this joy is not shared by much of the world- the lost generations who see everything through pixelated displays. That same sadness reflects in my new series, Pixelization.
Throughout the series, I hope to express the loneliness in the crowd that the creatives in the world feel. The shapes, textures, and compositions in each work represent how distorted reality is becoming. It does not matter how many pixels there are on the screen.
The square view of a phone screen becomes the photo frame for an entire picture of the world and the people in it. They pull the abstract hues and tones from a complex image and simplify them into blocks of meaningless color. I am saddened by how easily something beautiful and intricate boils down to a phone-size view.
It reminds me of how people condense real human connection and emotion. Instead of a blended, textured rainbow of feeling and conversation, we get static, blunt emoticons and a history of flat messages. This feeling is what I hope to explore through this series of paintings.
When I was working on these artworks, it struck me that pixels represent the false reality that many people live through. Why do people focus their attention on such a marginalized space? Do they not strive to see the beauty of the full picture? How are people so easily distracted by the bite-sized version of life they find on the screen?
Texture and layering are key elements in these paintings. Distorted ripples run through like a fractured reality- a smashed screen, perhaps. Sweeping brush strokes and flowing color schemes stand juxtaposed to overlaid blocks and hard shapes. The False distractions cover the truth below.
I also wanted to play with perspective in different ways. Deep connections built by delving deeper into relationships are fading. They are replaced by singular points of view given to us through what people want to show. Every technique I worked into Pixelization serves to share my heartbreak at how the digital world distorts reality.
Moreover, I want this series to be emotive and make people question the digitization of their lives. We must look harder for the true beauty of the world instead of staring at a screen. Let’s look with our eyes at the full spectrum of life and color rather than condensing it to fit on a smartphone.
Look at the first painting of this series.
