In the summer of 2009, I discovered an unexpected parallel between my natural process as a painter and the workings of the Adobe Illustrator Program. Illustrator inherently encompasses elements of "layering", which has always been a natural part of my own art making process as a painter. When I saw that I could place a scanned image of one of my paintings into Illustrator or Photoshop and decompose it, my approach to purposeful image making expanded. I began dissecting, recomposing, analyzing, and manipulating past and current works, and discovered a new way of working that was not only liberating, but pure play! Through Illustrator, I was able to view my paintings with fresh perspective -- my labor-intensive oil paintings were reinterpreted through hundreds of color-filled ameba-like puzzle pieces. I began combining collaged elements from my own work with historical references, and then manipulated these further. Using a flatbed scanner, my options increased as I captured small three-dimensional nature objects from my studio collection and added them to the mix.
Early works in this series involved the dissection of several of my paintings using digital media as a tool. This process provided a freedom to more readily maneuver my images and change my ideas as a painter. The digital collages in this series are compilations that use some or all of the following: elements from my oil paintings, images from art history, scanned nature forms, photography, a limitless array of available sources, and gouache paint. My process moves back and forth fluidly between the computer and direct painting, permitting perpetual change and multiple states that can deviate into new ideas.
The works shown were created in part during a sabbatical leave from the RI School of Design in 2011.
These were the most recent oil paintings from the series In the Age of Anxiety.
These are examples of earlier paintings in oils.
Images © Wendy Seller ~ Site © jb