Digital Art: Contents

Contents, RTomens, 2017

It started one way and ended up another - isn't that often the way when making art? If you absolutely know where you're going when starting a piece, good luck. Unless you're working from a photo or sketch, I suspect that for many visual artists the canvas (or screen) is a playing field and the 'game' evolves. Not that it's always as much fun as games should be.

Yet there's a deep pleasure, beneath the surface activity, which satisfies us, even if the activity itself is a challenge or problem. Sometimes there's a surprise ending, as was the case with Contents, even though I could see it coming after a while. The real surprise happened early on once the idea, the mind's eye picture, started taking shape.

A page containing the contents of a magazine. First it was obvious: do something with what was on the whole page (a mixture of images and text). But the appeal of the numbers marking each new set of contents took hold. They grew. I grew them, aware of the repeated pattern, also aware of their original intent; namely to direct you to the specific contents. But what if it became all direction and no content? The directions (numbers) themselves became more important.

The numbers used to tell people where to go. Now they stand alone. Are they now telling of what once was but can never be found? In this case, yes, unless you know the page. As such, to me, they represent signs but not directions. Perhaps we see them all the time in our lives and read them, but have no idea of how to act upon them. Or we just see them, unaware that they are telling us to go somewhere.

digital art, collage, digital collage