THEDOCWORLD BLOG

THE ART MOVEMENT, MISSION AND MANIFESTO

The mission of all The DOC artwork is the same, to tell the world a story. The method and movement of my aesthetic pursuits have to do with multistability~metastability as it applies to artistic innovation and design.

THE DOC PAINTINGS

There are roughly 30 paintings in this set. These are acrylic paintings of different shapes and sizes, and painted on both canvas and wood. The wood paintings are unique in that they have been painted on whatever pieces of wood I happened to have at my disposal. One of the largest pieces, about 200 x 300 cm, came from the back of an old Danish wardrobe that was on its way out. I couldn’t help noticing that the back piece wood be make for a lovely surface. Another, one of everyone’s favorite pieces, “eternity~moment”, was painted on a circular table – also on its way to the junkyard. The great thing about this practice is that you start out with objects that noone cares to keep, bound for reclamation, and turn them into artworks. I have found this satisfying. It also makes these particular paintings unique, and should facilitate their provenance in the years to come. The paintings in this set are quite vibrant with a high primary contrast. The red~blue dynamics is quite obvious.  The common denominator in this set of acrylic paintings is the mindset involved in producing them (see THE ART MOVEMENT above), and that they have each been used as a point of departure in producing one of the eventual DOC Storyboard panels. Thus, each painting also serves not only as a finished work, but also as a theme and inspiration for newer pieces. This is one of the strategies I use to let the painting paint the painter. It also means that these paintings are alive to me. They are my dear friends, sources of further aesthetic inspiration, and so are quite difficult for me to part with. The best case scenario would be that these paintings I do sell might be purchased by those with a similar interest in using artworks to inspire the production of new artworks.

THE DOC STORYBOARD

The DOC Storyboard consists of 400 panels, half of which are pictures, the other half, graphical prose. 20 of the pictures are the characters of the story, and 180 pictures that are the story itself. The Storyboard started out in 1996 as a travel journal in which, during my travels, had begun to draw, write, cut and paste anything I could to help me consolidate my life’s education. That was quite a while ago. Since then, the DOC Storyboard has gone through nine evolutionary generations, and is now available in ‘coffee table artbook’ form at blurb.com.

THE LEWIS~ENGSTRØM COLLABORATION

Currently, I am working with the Glass Artist Shelly Lewis on a fascinating collaboration that is resulting in some truly beautiful artworks. Lewis is a veteran in the medium of stained glass, and is now working in glass fusion, where the glass pieces are set up in designs and then fired in a kiln instead of binding the pieces with lead. The finished ‘fused’ pieces are stunning. Similar to clay firing glazes, the firing process adds an unpredictable fluidity and self-organizational quality to them that set them apart from the more conventional stained glass. We agreed that she would try to use some of my paintings as points of departure. This was an interesting challenge, to render a painting in fused glass. Obviously the colors wouldn’t be exact as they would be pieces of glass not paint. Cutting the lines in glass can be done but again, the lines are much more difficult to render in cut glass. Next, the finished glass pieces are able to be not only opaque and reflective like my paintings, but translucent, transparent, etc. How would these qualitative differences in media influence the final work. Finally, the firing process itself would produce its own surprises and subtleties. The question was what would these renderings in glass end up looking like? And how would they compare~contrast with the paintings? The results to date have been inspiring. Several of these pieces can be seen in shops and shows, and interest in them is on the rise. Click on the Lewis~Engstrøm CATEGORY to see the glass fusion ‘paintings’ and the original paintings on which they drew their inspiration.

THE DOC DIGITAL ARTWORK

The digital artwork can be divided into two areas, The DOC Storyboard pictures and a group of miscellaneous pictures. They have all been rendered using Adobe Photoshop…