For me, art is a voyage of discovery. I am as surprised by the art I create as anyone else who views it. Though I constantly strive to improve my skills, I am much more interested in creating something new (and hopefully beautiful) under the sun than in craftsmanship. I feel that photography has superseded other forms of art when it comes to reproducing the external world -it is the interior landscape that I strive to explore and reveal.
BIO
Born in Paris, France in 1950. Moved to New York when I was 5 years old. From an early age, developed an (unhealthy? obsessive?) interest in fantasy, science fiction, surrealism and anything that was beautiful and mysterious. My parents called me "Jean de la Lune" because I was often distracted by things that they couldn't understand. Also had an aptitude for drawing from an early age, but never really pursued it seriously back then. Went away to college in 1967, at the time that the psychedelic zeitgeist was reaching critical mass & got swept up in the maelstrom. Ego disintegrated & a new one rose like a phoenix from the ashes. Began drawing & painting in a stream-of-consciousness mode, bypassing the rational mind. Fell in love, moved to Berkeley, California, and had a son. Took art classes (illustration, figure drawing, portraiture, color theory, etc.). In the late 70's, began playing with computers. Learned to program & wrote simple applications for generating visual patterns. Having no real aptitude for marketing my artwork, I instead embarked on a career in information technology, which lasted 22 years, at which time I quit (in May of 2003). My current incarnation as a digital artist began with the first release of Fractal Design Painter. I experienced a breakthrough with the first release of Bryce, which was the medium that enabled me to finally satisfy my creative impulses. I use many other supporting pieces of software (Amorphium, Poser, & several others), but they only provide me with input for Bryce. All of my images are rendered only in Bryce, with no post-processing at all. Each of them starts with a bare-bones idea or model or texture which I then attempt to allow to evolve in whatever direction "it" decides & which I have never been able to predict. I obsessively tweak shapes, colors, textures, & visual relationships until the image seems "right". If the final result is somewhat disturbing and disorienting, yet at the same time beautiful, then I have succeeded...
Comments (10)
giulband
Wonderful composed fantastic colors !!!!
TwoPynts
Love your symmetrical doodles!
Faemike55
in the center, it looks like there is an evil blue clown, ready to take over the world Cool work
cvrad
LOOKSKOOL
peedy
Beautiful. Great colors. Corrie
anahata.c
These Bryce creations of yours are such a treasure chest of precious jewels, cheap costume jewelry, great grandmother's trinkets, old objects from the 16th C that no one in the family can recognize but which everyone figures is worth a lot, old grandfather clock parts, and fantasies from places as diverse as arcade games and pinball machines to the ancient fields of the Hindu and Buddhist epics. I love this. A juke box for the cosmic set. And re symmetry---it's a tyrant, I think, and yes it's 'cheating' in a way, because it takes away the need to do half the pic...But I learned that when I had to actually draw the second side, the act of duplicating in reverse was immensely challenging, even rejuvenating: Because, while I was repeating everything, I was doing it in reverse, which let me relive the first half in a whole new way. But you went further: Your front shapes look symmetric; but the back layers are different! That 'chaos' factor. We look at the two wiry looped-triangles, one to each side of that center face: The two sides (or "ears") are backed by true variations! On the right, you have the reds in different places than on the left. The bulgy balloony things---on the two bottom sides---have different colors in each case, even some different shapes. You gave each side real changes---so it's not wholly symmetric. But when you think of the original meaning, it all makes sense: sym meaning "with" (symbiosis, sympathy), and metry meaning "metric" or "measure": Everything in harmonious measure. It really doesn't have to be 'copy-cat', just harmonious. And as for the rest of the piece, I'll never know how you get that tactile feeling---I know this is 3D software, but your objects jump off the page. I love this piece. Love the erector-set "booga booga" look, love that he's got pods instead of teeth, love the echoes of his eyes around him, love the corpulent snakes and the big pink neon tubing...I could go on. Your imagination has order---sym-metrics---but it's unbridled, fun, and bursting with color and play (mixed with a little horror). I knew when I came here that I'd love the piece. And I did. These things are so well-formed, it's hard to believe you didn't just pull them out of your imaginary attic, dust them off, and post them. Wonderful!
auntietk
Nice! :) (You see, that's the kind of comment you can expect when I like it but have nothing meaningful to say. I'll leave all that to Mark.) :)
irisinthespring
Awesome work!
ansgar2
Fantastic work....!!! Well done...!!!
moat
Great!