Picture Element 0.1

Picture : Pix  -  Element : El

Memory - Work from what you know to what you don’t know:
When I was just starting out in my career in the video game industry, I was what was fondly referred to as a pixel pusher, a non-official title to be sure, but an apt name nonetheless. I sat at a computer and clicked away on those little square digital elements to delete them, add them, or change their color. I stared at them for hours, zooming in to see them individually, zooming out to see one or more in relation to all the others. The back and forth with this four-equal-sided shape would be a key artistic relationship for me for years.
 
I think it may also have helped shape the way I look at the world. That is to say, I often find myself looking for the details in the bigger picture, wanting to peer inside the inner workings of things. I’m always looking to find the very basic of elements that makes something the way it is, maybe I’m looking for a connection of sorts to other things, or maybe even a leveling of perceived differences.
 
These things that I know, and the things that I don’t know and that I’m curious about is where my process begins.
 
So, what’s needed today:
What’s really needed is nothing more than a broad sense of what you are looking for, some strategy for how to find it, and an overriding willingness to embrace mistakes and surprises along the way. Simply put, making art is chancy – it doesn’t mix well with predictability. (Bayles & Orland, 1993, p. 21)
 
What am I looking for, in a broad sense? I’m looking for the basic elements of existence within a square paper environment with the most basic of artist tools, graphite, a tool that I know well. The works will attempt to capture connecting moments within those smallest of elements.
 
My first fear is that what I’m looking for doesn’t make sense to anyone else, and maybe not even totally to me yet, but then again it doesn’t really have to. It’s the beginning of an artistic process. It’s what I’m looking for, and I’ll have to be open to the surprises that come with searching and doing.