As the 2nd action in a chain of Gift as Art experiments, I will give away my work. This series is called “PeopleMatter.”
What is it?
People Matter consists of 99 paintings on wood panel. The pieces were made in manic starts and fits over 18 months beginning in the winter of 2008. The subjects are Media figures: journalists, writers, bloggers, politicians, academics, and infolebrities at varied strata of recognizability.
And whom?
Edward R. Murrow to Perez Hilton to Tyler Coates. Status varies from the legendary, to Pop, to populist. There is a particular interest in dynamic variance between persona and authenticity and the ethics of communication. The sources were chosen from quickly culled jpegs based on my personal RSS, googling, hyperlinking, analog and digital reading habits.
For more images go here. For a complete list of the included subjects go here.
Why would you do that?
Each figure represents a parcel of the communication economy. Each is a piece of a collective talking, infecting, debating body politic. They are smallish chunks of the human thought collective—each is a bit of people matter.
How then?
The Representational style is built on the idioms of cartooning, caricature, abstraction, and classical portraiture.
My methodology involved searching through lossy jpegs, blurred vision, and construction lines for simple visual phrases and form or color notes to capture a ‘likeness.’ Often the likeness is failed, corrupted, or incomplete. Ballpoint pen and acrylic are the primary mediums because they are fast, responsive, and highly variable.
But what is the meaning of all this?
The intended tone is “ : | ” , “Unironic, ” and “Sincere.” I have tried to note when irony, exclamation, divergence, or confusion got the better of me. This was indicated by painting punctuation marks directly on the work. These images are intended as bilateral portraits of communications sent, lost, diverted or received.
Is this the end of our css aided meta interview?
Hope so. Is it?
Yes.
Great!
