‘Neurotica’, 36″ X 72″, oil on canvas, 1997. Also deliberately using forms and colours to get the viewer to react or feel something, possibly against their will. With visual art closing the eyes is too late, all the information goes in at the speed of light.
Here is the painting for scale hanging in the stairwell of the only upside down house on Earth, so far.
Using form and colour to provoke a viewer into a reaction. I suppose that describes all artworks. Now that we are surrounded by the A.I. and its brilliance, I am wondering with all my work, how many words would the A.I. need to make this. What would you say in a sentence to get this image. If my name or page are used as a prompt, would that be copyright infringement?
‘Neurotica XXX’, 21″ X 35″, oil on canvas, 1997/98. This is number 30 of this ongoing series, mostly now in pencil or inks. I would love to turn them all into giant oil on canvas paintings, but that would require a lot of money, mainly to find space big enough that I don’t get injured again from the chemical fumes. It took months to get the smell of linseed oil out of my tiny studio apartment. But I still prefer working in oils. You can get effects like airbrushing using just a regular brush, dry brush effects and the like.
This was created in photoshop using the painting Broken Symmetry.
This is an overlay showing roughly where the fractal emerged.There has been a bit more painting since I made this. But it can be achieved by following any row of the pentagons, then I separated the outside from the inside. I used these solid contrasting colours, blue and pink, to see the edge better.
Continuing to paint the equation. In this clip I am just adding a small shadow to one side of a series of pentagons. This is not sped up at all, I don’t care for that, it makes my eyes object. Or maybe my brain does. But it might be loud, it usually is quite loud in here when I’m painting. Peace and quiet…pffft.!!
Economist politicians, can’t feed you right now, they have important bills to pay. Their computers want cash this time. Can you wait until October? They will give two times as much rice as you need, but not until October, maybe November. Here, have some bullets and guns instead, defend your razor wire borders from intruders looking for food, oil, slaves, whatever. You need tear gas, ok, lots of that going around for cheap. No water though. Sorry. Maybe next year. Can you wait until next year? Everything will be better then. They guarantee it.
‘Ponder Too’, 36″ X 72″, oil on paper, 1996. A sure sign of an obsession of some kind, giant heads maybe, flexible giant heads. Much more it was the first steps after Bedlam Gallery closed, really pondering what to do next, why do I have another studio, I have no money etc. etc. But I was determined to stuff my genius into your heads,like it or not. I was working on the ‘neurotica’ series prior to these, quite a different method,I wanted to mold the heads into a twisted organic single head.This was an example of going to the nth degree with an idea. I wanted to make them even bigger, 20 or 30 feet would be good. At the time I had lots of paint, enough to use a plastering trowel to paint with oils, but the canvas was out of my budget, so paper and scrap wood worked fine. Also to store the idea, artists would know this, like a sketch but enough to stand alone.
The three ponderings for scale. Imagine them on forty foot canvases in the atrium of the giant bank where they have the golden toilet seats stored.
‘Pondering’, 32″ X 43″, oil on wooden skid with a large palette knife and brush, 1996. Thinking about the next brushstroke can take more time than making it. This painting is within the Domesticated series of paintings.This is a very heavy painting, not just the wooden skid but the volume of paint and plaster and things.
Graham Houston Arts 