Jim Green

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(b. 1947, San Angelo, Texas, USA)

 

In 2016, I switched from painting on canvas, to creating pictures using a computer, not intentionally, but more out of necessity. Between not having the money to rent the size studio I had in while living in Chicago, and working as an apprentice web designer in NYC, before and after 911, I had the choice of painting small pictures in our small apt., or exchange canvas and brush for a computer screen and computer mouse. 

 

In 2020 I began my first digital/mixed media series, titled 'Mashup' . I'm using the same approach I used on canvas, using images and elements to illustrate a form of synthesis, where the whole is more than the sum of its parts. In this case, the parts are images and elements, and the whole is the completed picture. Both conventional and digital paintings use the same improvisational method: I begin working without having a mental picture to work toward. I throw together many images and visual elements, to include, online images, online newspaper photos, and TV and music video screen shots) which I edit by subverting Photoshop's tools (i.e., make them do what they were not designed for) and put the pictoral elements through multiple iterations until a picture is created. The difference between the two methods is that when I painted on canvas, I used the same process, however, my finished paintings would wind up looking dull and muddled. Working digitally, using layers in Photoshop, I can produce a picture by without sacrificing clarity. Each digital painting I produce, It's like driving in the dark, looking for the light at the end of a tunnel. 

 

My influences range from Rembrandt, Velázquez, Seurat, Magritte, Andrew Wyeth, Jim Dine, to the styles of the Neo-Expressionists, such as Julian Schnabel, Albert Oehlen. And there are far too many painters from the 90s, both American and German, to mention here, whose styles and approaches gave me new ways of looking at art. One particular mention goes to Jasper Johns. As a painter, his credo, "Do something, do something to that, and then do something to that", continues to be my main approach for creating pictures. 

 

Regardless of the medium, method, or creative process I choose to produce pictures, my main focus is not to substitute conventional painting with one-off inkjet prints but instead to offer up another method of applying visual information on a 2D surface, particularly when so many 2D artworks are produced using today's technologies and printing processes.