‘Domesticated’, 24″ X32″, oil on panel. 1996. (Homo domesticus)
There are about 100 pieces in this series scattered around the earth. I still have 40 or so here in my studio/gallery. Some people don’t care for them. They have been in several shows the year after they were painted. I can only say some poeple can get very upset if you say the wrong thing, even if its a painting. One show was protested so loudly the owner became afraid and removed my work. Now that’s mob censorship. The show was titled “Want”, and this was one of them, probably the least offensive of them all. I highly doubt they will be shown at any gallery anywhere near me anytime soon.
‘The Other Foot’, 8″ X 10″,carbon on paper. It is a type of meditation for me, I have no idea where I am or what time it is, or even if time is a substance at all when I am drawing. The drawing presents itself in my mind, and I make the idea real on paper with a pencil. I had made a strange carving in wood of the foot of a horse, Pegasus to be exact, someone chopped off its feet so it could never land again, as Pegasus is immortal it could never land on earth again. It isn’t a classical myth or ancient origin, its a dream I had. This is the other foot.
Dancing across the heavens. The art of dreaming. I usually have a notebook to write in beside my bed. Sometimes the dream lingers long enough to write a few sentences. These sentences will then trigger the memory of the whole dream. Sometimes its only a couple of words. Sometimes the dream just evaporates as I struggle to open the book.
This is the original from my osteology course in anthropology. The x-ray style is done using photoshop 7, the old one. Could we consider that an A.I., or is it just a tool the A.I. uses in the same way we do, as we showed it how to after all. I have always assumed the machine I purchased to cut vinyl lettering in my sign shop was an A.I. That was in the late 1980’s, likely the end of my particular business, I was a sign-painter. The machine, I shall begin here to call it Arti, personalize it, I still haven’t decided on a pronoun for Arti. It is supposed to give us whatever we want, and its watching us now to find out what that thing might be. Today, possibly the idea we worship wealth and power, not just like it, we worship the war mongering banana thieves. Holy warriors marching into an uncertain future, still. Stop marching, apologize to all humanity for your behaviour. Perhaps stop whining about how hard it is to be a billionaire. They all do it, you must have noticed.
The engineers mantra is to create tools for us to make our lives and jobs easier. The point is taking away horrible jobs, like urine collector for the tannery down the road. What they are doing is designing a machine that reproduces that which anthropology and archaeology states deifines you as a concious being. The act of creating, art, literature music, etc. Maybe we should have engineers make a similar oath that doctors do before they get that degree. Do no harm!
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.
Graham Houston Arts 