IMPROVISING WITH LIGHT

Anthony Marshall Artist/Practitioner

I have listened to jazz since I was a boy. It was the improvisations that excited me and the ability to spontaneously move in and around the original theme with apparent effortless ease, or so it seemed! 

Over the last few years I have developed new techniques to create art.

The role of the iPad in the creative process.

The most important aspect about working with the iPad is that it allows you to develop your image ideas in a less complex digital environment. Working with software like Photoshop, Painter, Lightroom and others have for me become increasingly complex, slow and cumbersome. Every time you have to stop to think through the next series of technical moves within the software is detrimental to your creativity, by breaking the fluidity of the moment. All the technical aspects I already know (Tacit Knowledge) so it's now about continuing the improvisation letting your unconscious mind take over to intuitively concentrate on your own creativity. 

My Artworks utilise experimental digital photography blended together with painting and drawing as a hybrid medium using an iPad Pro and six commercially available apps. I am not trying to create a representation of what’s before me, but an interpretation. At the heart of my work is the creation of an archive of abstract paintings, drawings and photo-sketches. I call them photo-sketches because none of the images at this stage would stand alone as an individual piece of work, as they will only make sense when combined with each other. Many of the artworks you see here are a blending of multiple images gathered over an extended period of time. Although many of my works start with a photograph, I think like a painter. My compositions are minimalist and use the visual language of shape, form, texture and colour, improvising with the light on any given day (Complex Simplicity). Serendipity also plays its part in these interpretations, you can never be sure how different sketches will work together. Experimentation is the key and sometimes it creates happy accidents, through which I highlight and accentuate the transient moment of light. 

In Search of Pattern. It seems to me that our brains are hot wired to search for Pattern in Art, Music, Numbers, Words and Design.

Architectural Abstracts, Water Reflections, Serendipity, Abstract Flowers, Trees.