Pixeloo Rocks the Photoshop!

I have just been browsing through one of the blogs on this months Blogger's notable blogs. It's an awesome blog called Pixeloo, and the work done by the Pixeloo artist is amazing. I wish I had those kind of Photoshop skills!

One particular piece caught my eye and you can see why...

I remember experimenting with Photoshop, making similar works where hands and eyes, kidneys and brains were manipulated and reorganised to make strange entities like the one in this photo. This was while I was in my second year of art school and I was using Photoshop version 4 at the time, I have 5.2 now wow aren't I up to date ha ha ha! But with a bit of experimentation I was able to create images, which are very roughly done, especially if you compare them to the images created by Pixeloo. I always wanted to have another go at making these works now that I have a bit more experience with Photoshop but I have never gotten around to it, my work took a different road so to speak.

This is one of the works I am talking about which was not as described before a mixture of body parts and organs but from another series that was done using Photoshop. I was looking at organ farming and cloning body parts and how the body as 'parts' would become part of our everyday lives if commercialised. Lost a hand in a work accident? Don't worried we'll make you a new one. Don't like your feet? Don't worry we'll make you some new and better looking ones. I have the other images on disk somewhere so I will post them when I find them.

Vanessa from one of my absolute favourite blogs, Street Anatomy, has asked me if she can post some of my art on Street Anatomy. Of course I said she could I couldn't be more pleased and honoured. Thank you Vanessa for helping me share my art and ideas to others with similar interests, ideas and skills.

Working on the very sterile oil paintings, which are part of the Mutant Consequences series, I started to think about redrawing some of them in a manner which took them beyond medical specimens and present them as actual living entities, organisms that are living and continually morphing and growing. They would be like Frankenstein's monster, created in the laboratory but with a life of its own that is not in the control of the creator.

I have adopted to paint these works using water colours to create a sense of flesh and soft squishy insides. I have not tried to render the works so perfectly as the oil paintings but rather like the water marks, they remind me of bodily fluids.

I have also started to include bodily functions such as excreting waste. The mutant orgaisim slithers off the laboratory table and makes its own place in the world...

A Vote For Being Sick

I've had a terribly sore back for the last 3 weeks and a nasty case of chronic sinusitis for the past 8 weeks. Being in such a state of pain and illness I've come to think whether such a state can be desirable in a way. Does being sick offer the only escape we have from our ever demanding lives? If we are sick we have a legitimate reason to take time off work or from looking after our other responsibilities. Being sick gives us the opportunity to lay down and rest without feeling guilty about it. If we are sick then we have reason to not be responsible for the things we are otherwise responsible for. Of course I would say this theory applies to a certain group of illnesses. I don't think any form of cancer, for instance , would be a holiday from 'life' but rather a living hell.

Mutant Consequences Series Explained

I guess I should really introduce the Mutant Consequence Series to you all. As you may have noticed there are some photos of the other paintings in the series in an earlier post. The series was a set of small oil paintings which looked at what might come from experimenting with human genes in a laboratory. Would such experimentation lead to a collection of mutations, mishaps and the creation of new humanoid organisms? The subjects in the paintings are a messy byproduct of an experimentation gone wrong. The works are designed to look like a series of medical illustrations. The flat grey backgrounds and the symmetrical compositions have been employed to create a sense that this is a medical illustration rather than a still life or a 'dead life' if you like hehehehe. I wanted the works to lack any emotion and to be simply descriptive.

Mutant Consequences Series 2001, oil on canvas

Boxes and High Gloss Finishes

Was thinking of taking the mutant consequences and sculpting them out of putty or polymer and then spray painting them so that they have a high gloss finish like plastic toys and cars. The organic completely altered into the manufactured. Mutants in a box is the other idea, the mutated fleshy blobs packed in a tight wooden box with a glass lid that is starting to crack under the pressure of the growing mass.

Drawings on paper, 2002

Oil on canvas, 2000, Mutant Consequences Series

Medical Making Mutation

As this is my first post I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself and my art practice. I studied at the Victorian College of the Arts from 1998- 2001, enrolled in the painting department but after my first year at art school there was very little painting that I actually did do. I opted instead to explore digital photography, photographic manipulation, installation and sculpture. I did continue to paint and draw but not as much as I did before.

During my time at the V.C.A. I started reading science fiction novels and regularly read articles in New Scientist. Dolly the cloned sheep was introduced to the world and talk of farming organs and headless human beings in laboratories featured on the national and international news. There was the successful transplant of a dead mans hand to that of another who had lost his and claims that there were scientists in Italy who had cloned the first human.

All this started to feed my morbid imagination and stirred up images of twisted genetic mutations and body parts hanging like sausages and cured meat in laboratories around the world. Questions like, What was to become of the sacred body, our soul's home if we just started to chop it up and sell it? What will be the consequences?, started going around in my head. As you will see throughout images that I will be posting in this blog, it is these three questions that my art mainly focuses on. Even so, I have, in the last 4 or so years also started making works which look at issues related to western medicine and the consumption of pharmaceuticals particularly those which are used for mood enhancement, antidepressants and stimulants.

Whilst this is a very simple over view and introduction to my art I hope that as you browse my blog and revisit over time you may find out more about who I am as an artist and what my art is all about. I also hope my posts and works inspiring, challenging and maybe at times a little confronting. I wish this blog can be, not only a place for me to share my finished works, but also an electronic sketchbook where I can discuss my ideas and works in progress. I am certain I am not the only artist out there working with these issues so I hope this blog will also help me to develop a relationship with other similar artists and people who have an interest in science and medicine. Please if you are an artist whose work also explores similar ideas do email me and share links to your work.

Thank you and welcome to my blog!
Kind regards
Kathy