#seanward

How One Star Can Empower The Masses, Sean Ward

This piece is part of my full spectrum white space series of works. The subject is David's Star in a op-art format. The full spectrum color palette really help to give the painting optical movement.

Audrey IV, Sean Ward

Part of the "Fading Identities" series of works. This portrait of Audrey Hepburn exudes pastel colors, all in a very cool tone. Fading Identity portraits are made 20 times and each coloration is completely different from the others. Once 20 are made, no more pieces will be made of the individually designed painting.

Memories of Marilyn, Sean Ward

Part of a new series I am working on. This one is of a silhouette of Marilyn's signature movie scene, abstracted to be less obvious.

Bob, Sean Ward

Part of my "fading identities" series. These white space pieces show dead, and sometimes living, celebrities and they conceptually portray how their identities are falling away from being clear to our current day and age. Some people know them directly, others need help in identifying them.

John Wayne III, Sean Ward

“Fading Identities” is an homage to the individuals of our past and present, who may not always be there as a picture-perfect image in your mind, but rather, as a general image of their identity. This is not something that is intentioned to occur, but it is just a process of being human and having fragments, or pieces, of these memories unavailable for recollection. Throughout the past several decades, there have been psychologists studying cognitive ability that have defined the two primary memory systems in the human mind. There is a short-term memory, or “working” memory that holds information about just a few things that are currently on the individual’s mind, but only for a temporary time period. Then, there is a long-term memory that can hold immense amounts of information gained through the individual’s lifetime of thoughts and experiences. Each of these memory systems vary in the capable extent of the amount of detail that are able to provide to the individual. Working, or short-term, memory provides very details mental images about a few things that have been on the individual’s mind. While long-term memory is about to provide a vast assortment of numerous details, but all to a less crystal-clear image, which the memories might seem fuzzy to the viewer based on their experiences and sights. Over time, it is inevitable that the memories begin to fade from their crystal clear beginnings, and that is where science comes into play again. The information capacity of human memory has an important role in cognitive and neural models of memory, recognition, and categorization, because these process models implicitly or explicitly make claims about the level of detail stored in the individual’s memory. Detailed short-term representations allow more computational flexibility because they enable processing at task-relevant levels of abstraction, but this is traded off with the amount of additional storage available in the mind. We cannot always encode the details of these images perfectly, yet the human mind is a wonderful tool that consistentally is able to interpret pieces of a memory and shape these mental forms into a successful recollection of the thought. Much like this process of memory, the façade of celebrity status is held on to in the same way. Whilst the celebrity is focused on by society the image remains clear, but as time progresses, such is the amount of images of such celebrity is flashed before the eyes of the viewer. Over time, that celebrity’s image might fade, but pieces will always remain, and those pieces, like long-term memories are preserved in the mind, and in these paintings that help keep the supports of our society alive within the mind.

The Siren, Sean Ward

“White Space Design” is a body of work that focuses on the ideals of pattern. It can represent many different things throughout humanity. The people, the beliefs they follow, the natural world around you, the history of subjects and the traditions that have been followed. Different colors and shapes vary meanings throughout different cultures, but the idea is carried down from generation to generation. From birth to death, pattern is a part of everyday life and cultural practice. The drive to recognize and form patterns can be from a glimpse into curiosity, discovery of new ideas and experimentation through everyday life. Da Vinci found this “Way of Stimulating and Arousing the Mind to Various Inventions” so invaluable that he applied it not only visually, as a means of inventing landscape or battle scenes, but in musical matters as well. The more patterns we can recognize, the wider our imaginative and creative scope. There is a revolution in the science of design under way, and most people, including designers, aren’t even aware it is taking place. Color, for example, was just researched to find that simply glancing at shades of green can boost creativity and motivation. It is easy to assume that there is correlation between verdant colors and vegetation capable of bearing food, which would mentally trigger the thought of nourishment. There is a science between window views of landscapes aiding in patient recovery, learning in classrooms and expanding productivity in the workplace. Additionally, certain patterns also have a universal appeal. Humanity responds dramatically to balanced pattern so much so that it has been researched to reduce stress levels by as much as 60 percent, just by being the field of vision of the viewer. In a recent piece for Medium, Kevin Ashton recently analyzed “how experts think.” Stating, “It turns out patterns matter, and they matter a lot. A star football quarterback needs to recognize all kinds of patterns – from the type of defense he’s facing, to the patterns his receivers are running, to the typical reactions of defenders. These, of course, has to happen in a matter of nanoseconds, as a 300-pound lineman is bearing down on you, intent on ripping you limb from limb.” The more you are thinking about pattern, the more you can see patterns all around you. Get to work on time in the morning is the result of recognizing patterns in your daily commute and responding to changes in schedule and traffic. Diagnosing an illness is the result of recognizing patterns in human behavior. The same goes for just about any field of expert endeavor – it’s just a matter of recognizing the right patterns faster than anyone else. The future of intelligence is in making our patterns better, our heuristics stronger. In Kevin Ashton’s previously mentioned article, he refers to this as “Selective Attention” which is about focusing on what really matters so that poor selections are removed before they ever hit the conscious brain. While some may be skeptical of Kurzweil’s Pattern Recognition Theory of Mind, they also tend to admit that Kurzweil is a genius. One thing is clear, and that is being able to recognize patterns is much what gave humans their evolutionary edge over animals.

Taylor III, Sean Ward

“Fading Identities” is an homage to the individuals of our past and present, who may not always be there as a picture-perfect image in your mind, but rather, as a general image of their identity. This is not something that is intentioned to occur, but it is just a process of being human and having fragments, or pieces, of these memories unavailable for recollection. Throughout the past several decades, there have been psychologists studying cognitive ability that have defined the two primary memory systems in the human mind. There is a short-term memory, or “working” memory that holds information about just a few things that are currently on the individual’s mind, but only for a temporary period. Then, there is a long-term memory that can hold immense amounts of information gained through the individual’s lifetime of thoughts and experiences. Each of these memory systems vary in the capable extent of the amount of detail that can provide to the individual. Working, or short-term, memory provides very detailed mental images about a few things that have been on the individual’s mind. While long-term memory is about providing a vast assortment of numerous details, but all to a less crystal-clear image, which the memories, based on their experiences and sights, might seem fuzzy to the viewer. Over time, it is inevitable that the memories begin to fade from their crystal-clear beginnings, and that is where science comes into play again. The information capacity of human memory has an important role in cognitive and neural models of memory, recognition, and categorization, because these process models implicitly or explicitly make claims about the level of detail stored in the individual’s memory. Detailed short-term representations allow more computational flexibility because they enable processing at task-relevant levels of abstraction, but this is traded off with the amount of additional storage available in the mind. We cannot always encode the details of these images perfectly, yet the human mind is a wonderful tool that consistently is able to interpret pieces of a memory and shape these mental forms into a successful recollection of the thought. Much like this process of memory, the façade of celebrity status is held on to in the same way. Whilst the celebrity is focused on by society the image remains clear, but as time progresses, the number of images of such celebrity flashing before the eyes of the viewer begins to dwindle. Over time, that celebrity’s image might fade, but pieces will always remain. Those pieces, like long-term memories, are preserved in the mind and in these paintings which thusly help keep the supports of our society alive within the mind. Fading Identity portraits are made with 20 editions, each different from each other in coloration, but the same in design.