the artist's statement

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye" from THE LITTLE PRINCE. When people ask me "WHAT KIND OF ARTIST ARE YOU?"... I tell them, I am a painter ... they ask "OH oil or watercolor?".... I say, neither... I paint with light ... they give me a strange look.... IF I have the time and I think they are really interested, then I clarify... I use a camera and a scanner as a starting point, and then where it leads me I never know ... the end result may be a light capture from my scanner, or a manipulated photo, using many different computer enhancement tools including photoshop...... sometimes I create something that does not even look like anything recognizable. Then sometimes, I use mixed media.... mixing a printed inkjet picture with maybe a magazine transfer using wintergreen oil, or adding paint, or using sandpaper to rough it up ....in the end I have something original that never existed before.... just a splash of pixel dust.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

night visitors 1

I started out with a dark woods scene captured in late autumn.  Then I created a bunch of butterflies out of a picture I found on the net with the use of the cloning and transforming tools in photoshop CS2.  I then funked up my dark woods photo with some topaz filters and added water using Flaming Pears Flood filter.  Finally, I combined the butterflies and the woods.  The final piece can be interpreted in many ways, but my take on it is that the butterflies represents life, and the dark woods represent death.  With death comes new life.  White butterflies are, to me anyway, a symbol of a new beginning. 

3 comments:

KasiaTurajczyk said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
KasiaTurajczyk said...

magic, very beautiful.
For me a butterfly is a symbol of the death-and-life cycle
you asked me to tell you what do I think about your blog....
I am not so sure that the black background with the blue colour fonts is really a good idea. Did you try different colour combinations?
What I do like is that: your artwork + explanation.
Wish you all the best
Cheers,
Kasia

Johny Alives said...

thanks Muminek ..... appreciate your input.... the reason I chose black as the background is to clearly show the art pieces .... the blue I thought went well with the black... I will try some other combos to see if I come up with something more pleasing... again thank you for your honest opinions.