Ian's Jottings

It is common for artists to be told of the importance of developing a consistent and coherent style. Galleries of course like this since it makes marketing so much easier if an artist can be nicely packaged up. It wouldn’t be too far off the mark to say that pretty much every professional relationship that I had cultivated throughout the 1990s collapsed as a result of what happened to my work in…

How do you price your work? Pricing of work seems to be one of those black arts with no definitive answer. It should go without saying of course that you need to cover the cost of your materials. Beyond that, go on any art based forum, and you will find a myriad of answers. I’m going to stick my neck out here and say that most of these are simply wrong, especially in the handling of…

My last four posts on generative AI may have been late to the party, it seems. This story, from Vox, suggests that the public are not taking to AI with quite the enthusiasm of a few months ago. Their conclusion? Generative AI can do some amazing things. There’s a reason why Silicon Valley is excited about it and so many people have tried it out. What remains to be seen is whether it can be more…

This is the last of four posts dealing with AI and AI Art. It takes a different form to the previous three. In this post, I look only at the output from AI Art apps, without regard to how it works or what issues its use might raise. The post concludes with an overall assessment of AI art and my reactions. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 (this post) In part 3, I briefly described how I tested the…

This is Part 3 of a series of linked posts considering AI. It looks at AI art from an artist’s perspective. Inevitably it raises the, probably unanswerable, question ‘what is art’. Part 1 looked at AI in general. Some more specific issues raised by AI art are covered in Part 2. Part 4 will be about my experience with one app, including a gallery of AI-generated images. Links to each post will…

Introduction to Part 2 This post began as a limited review of what has become known as AI Art. In order to do that, I had to delve deeper into AI in general. Consequently, the post has grown significantly and is now in three parts. Part 1 looked at AI in general. This post, Part 2 will look at more specific issues raised by AI art. Part 3 will look at the topic from the perspective of an artist.…

Introduction to Part 1 This post began as a limited review of what has become known as AI Art. In order to do that, I had to delve deeper into AI in general. Consequently, the post has grown significantly and is now in three parts. This post, Part 1, looks at AI in general. Part 2 will look at more specific issues raised by AI art, while Part 3 will look at AI art from the perspective of an…

If you go to any gallery show, the chances are you will see some huge paintings. Indeed, some are so big they might equally be described as murals. How much of that comes from the artist wanting more space in which to work, I wonder? It’s a value judgement, of course, but too often with contemporary art it seems to me to be a substitution of size for content. Of course, simple marks can be…

This post looks at how long buried memories can resurface and trigger creative inspiration. Albert Irvin Back in December 2018, I went to an outstanding exhibition at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol, Albert Irvin and Abstract Impressionism. In 1959, Irvin visited an exhibition called The New American Painting at Tate, curated by MOMA New York and toured to eight European cities.…

As the absence of posts here might indicate, I’ve been going through a period where I can’t seem to make progress, whether writing or printmaking. I’ve been casting around for ways of getting through this creative block. This post is about one of the approaches I’ve tried. A common factor in being blocked is I think fear of not getting it ‘right’, the feeling that everything has to be brilliant…

This is the paradox that lies at the heart of the mystery of artistic creation. The meaning which a work of art has for society is not the same meaning that the artist was conscious of putting into it. This is because a work of art is not just a telephone exchange which facilitates straightforward communication. The work of art is in some profound sense an independent, live entity. It has its own…

I’ve made a minor change on the Shop page. You can now browse everything in the shop by clicking on either ‘Medium’ or Collection. If you do, you will find several sub-categories. ‘Art under £50’, is self-explanatory. The new link, Current Work, only shows my most recent work, representative of my current practice. Everything seems to be working correctly, but if you find any problems, please…

Stripes 1 is an original digital print, one of a set based on stripes. They are all available in limited editions of 70. I made it using, as a data source, scans of some of my analogue collage works (also available from the shop.) They have a complicated pedigree. The shapes and colours come from the collage pieces. The papers I used to make those collage, were themselves made by gel printing. I…

Changes behind the scenes

I’ve been making some changes to the shop behind the scenes, tidying up the shipping side of things. I’ve extended the range of places I will ship to, and I hope this time set the shipping costs up correctly. With luck, you won’t notice, but if you do find any errors or inconsistencies, please let me know. Off-line, I’m also building a proper database of completed images and where they are…

I’ve just made a set of digital images built around stripes. Working digitally is my fallback position when I’m prevented from doing anything else, whether by time, health or anything else. I had no great expectations for these. I picked on stripes for the same reason I first picked on the cross, and recently the fuji-like peak silhouette. They were a recognisable starting point. When I posted…

Site changes – update

The improvements to the shop structure have now been completed. You now have several alternative options for browsing. You can choose between either the art medium used, or the subject. In addition, you can also browse through images priced below £50. There is still some tidying up to do, but the shop seems to be functioning as it should. In particular, I am still editing, or in some cases…

Site changes coming up

In January, I hope to begin restructuring the shop. It’s frankly a bit of a mess at the moment and not very logically organised, which I don’t like. I’m physically messy, I know, but mentally I tend the other way, obsessing about clarity of expression and language. That’s what makes me enjoy writing and editing, I suppose. I have tried to avoid major restructuring up to now, but the site is now…