Art and Random Thoughts - July 1, 2023
This week’s art: City of the Future II
Following the theme of my previous piece, City of the Future (1), I continued reaching back to a prior century’s wistful future. Perhaps there’s a timeline where those pesky wars didn’t derail everything and we built big grand things. Or maybe there’s still a chance that our future will be as interesting too. Well, earlier last month the entire sky in New York turned orange from forest fire smoke a long way off. Our future might be closer to blade runner at this point.
Weekly thoughts: 5 things that have inspired my art
I tend to find inspiration in all sorts of things, but here, in no particular order are 5 that have stuck with me for quite some time and in small ways and large inspire the subject matter and style of my pieces.
1. Hudson River School art
Although there are many styles of painting I enjoy, nothing quite hits the spot like a majestic landscape from the Hudson River School and other artists of similar Romantic geological-inspired movements. And nothing quite hits the spot within that spot like an Albert Bierstadt painting of giant f***ing mountains.
It’s wild to me how the locations depicted in these paintings from early days of the United States are probably now within eyeshot of a highway and a strip mall. But these paintings let us forget all that. As far as I’m concerned, these paintings have it all; powerful atmosphere, ethereal lighting, a massive sense of scale, tranquil waters, peaceful fields, and mysterious forests. Somehow it manages to convey the overwhelming power of nature and the soothing comfort of nature all in one painting.
2. Daguerreotypes
There’s something somewhat magical to me about early photography. Between all the noise, the blotchy shadows, and blown out highlights we can see reality come through from an era when barely any part of reality was captured by photograph.
I’ve always liked striving to depict things as realistically as possible in my art, except for the small probably that very little of the stuff I draw actually exists in reality. Since it’s incredibly hard to depict something photo-realistically that doesn’t exist, I thought, well, what if I aimed to draw as well as a really shitty photograph? But rather than settle for a shitty photograph, what if I could capture some of the essence of how early photography captured reality? Imperfect, not perfectly crisp, but clearly recognizable as reality to the eye.
3. Clouds
A lot of my art relates to the sky, and part of the reason for that is I just f***ing love clouds. And I don’t mean, some dinky little wisps of cirrus clouds. No; the only inspiring cloud in my book is a big f***ing cumulonimbus cloud towering as high into the sky as atmospheric physics will physically allow it to. Whenever I find some good massive voluminous clouds, I can’t help but think that something magical needs to live in there. Maybe a city, maybe a ship, maybe a vessel that would violate a ton of FAA regulations. Who wouldn’t want to live there themselves? (Actually, it would probably be incredible dangerous, and besides, there’s no supermarkets there).
4. The concept art of Yoshitaka Amano
I played a lot of video games when I was a kid, and sometimes I still do. In the course of those endeavors, I ended up mesmerized by Yoshitaka Amano’s artwork, most specifically his concept art for games like the Final Fantasy series. The fact that those games often take place in steampunk-inspired worlds makes them fall right in my wheelhouse (and actually they probably helped create my wheelhouse). Amano somehow manages, with what seems like a whirlwind of whimsically abstract flourishes, to create a piece that makes your eye fill in the details. Somehow in all this chaos, I can see a city and I’m not sure how.
5. New York City
Few other cities in the US come close to New York in terms of the quality and quantity of inspirational pre-war architecture. Sadly, many inspiring buildings, including most of the ones in this photo no longer exist, but somewhere in space and time there was a version of New York that remains intact with all this splendor. Fortunately, because this city is just so big, there’s still a huge amount remaining, and you can find virtually any pre-war architectural style here; neoclassical, beaux-arts, neo-gothic, romanesque revival, art nouveau, and of course a massive f**k-ton of art deco.
* * *
So I said I’d share 5 sources of inspiration, right? I mean, I could keep going. There’s definitely at least 6, and maybe even a hundred. I’d better save those for another post though…