Artist's statement - Is this it?
Allen Jones is quoted as seeing 'photography as a viable extension of the creative arsenal'. Andrew Lambirth Allen Jones - works Royal Academy 2005
As to what a picture represents, that depends upon who looks at it. James McNeill Whistler 1878
One of the things I love about a photography as opposed to a film or other narrative form is that the viewer will always bring their own story to the photographs, because my photographs are unresolved. When I say that I don't really know precisely what a picture is about, I'm telling you the truth. Gregory Crewdson Sunday Times 2005
Our 'craft' and 'skills' are what enable us to express what we have in our hearts and minds. But I don't think there's any such thing as absolute originality of thought, only new and different means of self-expression. After all, none of us lives in a vacuum, and we are bound to be influenced by the work and ideas of others. So stop worrying; just do what you feel you have to do. Don’t be too concerned about the deeper content of the work you do, because I'm pretty convinced it exists a lot of the time on a subconscious level, and remains intuitive and unspoken between artist and audience. If music is a 'language' sufficient in itself, then so is visual art. Art which needs lengthy explanation fails in my view, because it does not communicate in visual terms. So always try to stay in touch with your intuitive side - the bit you need to debate with yourself is the technical side. Kate Merrigan painter 2002
I believe that the primary purpose and driver behind creativity is your satisfaction, not in an egotistical sense, but your own expression of your ideas. Other people’s opinions and popular approval are a secondary concern and are always going to be harder to come by, especially as you get more esoteric. Remember the three pillars of Zen: Great Faith, Great Courage, Great Questioning. Jamie Robinson 2002
In some cases, it was the idea that was important. So it doesn't need a finished painting as long as it's some indication of what it might have been. Sir Peter Blake Now we are sixty-four at the National Gallery 1996.
In the wake of Duchamp et al, the 1960s' pop artists blew away much of the established rule book about what constituted 'art' – I took heart. I am not comfortable with artificial categories such as fine art, graphic art, or craft. In the plane of two-dimensional imagery, I guess I'm now somewhere between photography, graphics and the digital arts. Pixel technology suits my thinking and my range of skills; I have been described as a polymath. Technology and art are inseparable, each sparking off ideas in the other. Artists have always been quick to exploit new technologies, materials and tools (Dürer and the printing press; Vermeer and the camera obscura; Degas and high speed photography; Paolozzi and screen-printing; Donaldson and acrylic paint; Hockney and Polaroids; Hamilton and the electronic Quantel Paintbox).
For me, new art has to be original. I believe the product says something about the artist, if only that he/she was kowtowing to the establishment or prostituting their talents or just needing to earn a crust. How the viewer interprets the artefact is another matter; the artist has limited control over that. Essentially art comprises the acts of conceiving and executing the artefact for others to behold and judge.
What I bring to my work can only comprise my experiences, my feelings and aspirations, my imagination and fantasies, my limited but precious resources (45 years of negatives, slides, drawings, books, cuttings and notes) and my accumulated skills (film, television, photography, editorial, IT, basic draughtsmanship, et al). Whether anyone actually likes what I produce doesn't really matter.
To bring an idea to fruition (and some of my ideas have been in note form for many years), my production process still starts in the camera, with on-going creative decision-making, choice of film-stock and lens, point-of-view, framing and the 'moment' of exposure. But for me, that is only the start. In a sense, the resulting negative is a template for painting just as the original camera obscura was used, or one component of a collage. The camera does not lie, but it certainly is economic with the truth. It is selective, leaving out whatever the angle of the lens did not cover, whatever happened immediately before and after the moment of exposure; maybe it omits or distorts the colour content; certainly it does not capture the sound nor smell. It is impossible, even for an unadulterated photo, to be completely objective and the viewer's interpretation is of course subjective. Digital manipulation allows me to augment the image beyond the 'truth'.
While my pictures tend to have recognisably photographic provenance, I allow the photographic and computer and painting processes – and serendipity – overtly to affect the results. I do leave some of my photos as shot but, just as I used to discover previously unnoticed elements of a picture under the darkroom enlarger and in the chemicals' dish, now I explore what is revealed on the computer screen. It can be can developed pretty well as I wish. For sometime now, I have been trying ways out of the conventions and boundaries of the photographic image, conceptually and physically, in the viewfinder and on the computer 'canvas'. Montages from several negatives and drawings have appeared. The art of the 60s remains a seminal influence on my more recent work.
Raking over my past and my collections, I am making connections and crystallising my ideas. I'm not the first to make analogies and to discover the commonalities between the branches of arts and crafts and to be stimulated by them. Increasingly I find that I am confronting and analysing my own personality and sexuality, distilling what I find and seeking to express it. I am exploring and expressing my emotions. Is this it?
© Colin Robinson 2008
Today, artists are still as new-media literate as Dürer was, not only because there is a plethora of new technological tools to work with, but also because our contemporary culture requires that all of us understand our world as it is presented on computer or television screens... Many have decided to work with computer-based forms because their aesthetic visions and thematic concepts can only be communicated effectively via digital equipment. Gabriella Fanning, Editor & Publisher Art on Paper & ArtByte