Artist Research- Chris Finley
Chris Finley is an American artist who is interested in audience participation and interpretation. In his “Power Sources” series, from which these three paintings belong, Chris Finley explores the relationship people in the media spotlight have with the rest of the population.
“People in power daily affect out lives and fortunes, and more recently our misfortunes, but their distance is parallel in a sense to their ‘reach’. The fact that Finley’s abstract paintings these figures have completely disappeared relates to their absence/presence in our lives, to their visibility and invisibility”.
What interested me most about Finley’s works was how much his paintings seemed to explore space. His use of elliptical lines and patterns create a sense od depth and perspective looking as is it could be sculpture.
I was intrigued to learn that Finley also used photo references for his work. “…Finley searches for and chooses images from the Internet and then subjects them to various alterations. The images are turned, stretched and distorted, rendered completely alien from their original sources”.
This made me think about if I should use a photo as reference and manipulate it through Photoshop?
Up until now I have made a conscious effort not to reference anything but to work entirely from my mind. But as weird as it may sound that approach to working is quite limited. I think by working from an image (a manipulated one) the only thing that will change is the way that I experiment with colour and space. Instead of experimenting directly onto a canvas with paint I will be experimenting with the tools in Photoshop.
I think at the very least I will try, because when looking at colour and space, variety is always a good thing.
