Current Process
Making of an Image - 2019
by Matt Kane - “Current Process”
Vintage Photo Collection and Online Archives
My extensive photo collection includes photos from the dawn of photography through the present day. I collect photos that strike a strong resonance with me on a psychological or visceral dimension. In addition to hounding antique dealers and flea markets, I've also made a habit of exploring online image archives. When I began serious work as an artist in the early 2000's, I visited libraries to access photo collections. Now, so much of these are available online. But nothing online can equate the smell and touch of a vintage photograph.
Found black and white photography meets imagined color
Original postcard and color sketch
Finished artwork emerges from interactions with custom software
An artwork of mine is the result of several hours of interacting with my program, making artistic choices from start to finish. Sometimes I spend an entire day with a piece. In more recent complex work, I've spent entire days of an entire week. I decide how to leverage the hundreds of tools I've created from the many thousands of hours I've spent coding. As I build out more to my software, I build out more posibilities for my future artistic creations.
An aesthetic developed in traditional studio materials moves ahead via coding.
“So his fate forgave the time he spent to hesitate” 2005 | 30″ x 20″ | acrylic paint, crayon, ink, pencils, resin on panel
"What Child Is This" 2017 | digital painting
In 2005, I rendered each element in its own way. Each piece of a painting seems to tell me their appropriate style. To the left, notice how the pink seat cushions are rendered with pencil, the floor and background rendered with acrylic paint and ink washes, and the face rendered with halftone. This aesthetic has been carried over from my traditional studio work into my digital work. Whereas previously it was different material, it is now a different combination of algorithms I've written.
detail
Marks as Metaphor
I see colors over black and white in my mind's eye. My color sketches are laid down with urgency; a frantic dissemination of acrylics, gel pens, crayons, and pencils over a black and white print on paper. The marks I make are metaphors for more complex patterns and structures that will take shape in later work. Indeed, the same transformation occurs with the original photograph and even with my color choices. Everything becomes an opportunity for transformation from simple to complex. Much of my coding has been done to create algorithms that support this idea.
color sketch detail
final work detail