BTC Stands for "Behind the Curtain". Its a look at work created by various artists, photographers and creators around the world.
Its a small peak behind the curtain as to how the piece was created and the conceptual ideas behind it.
All art comes with a story.
A few years ago I went through an obsession with what I call "Deep Storytelling".
Most art that we see tells a limited story within it and leaves the interpretation to the viewer. For example, DaVinci's Monalisa tells a tale of one woman at that time in her life. The story is simple, poignant and the art executed with perfection. But regardless of how well or how bad it was painted, it still told a story.
All creative processes tell a story in some method. Books tell the deepest story but music, art, poetry, etc all tell stories to varying degrees.
I wanted to devise a method for telling a story on a broad scale within a single piece of art. I'd previously explored telling a story over multiple pieces of art to create a series. So it was logical to reverse the process and try to tell a story with a lot of elements within one piece.
I quickly ran into a barrier I didn't expect. Size. This wasn't the 16th century and this was not the Sistine Chapel. I had no massive canvas on which tell an epic story upon. Technology was against me. While I could develop a canvas of any size I wished, the technology eventually maxed out my ability to create and the ability for people to see the art.
If you use the piece above as a guide, some of you may be able to see the details if you expand it and explore it. Some of you can't. While our technology we use has expanded, the ways in which we view that technology are so far shrinking. We more and more view things on a phone screen that is only a few inches wide. While we can shrink things down and expand it on our screen, I still don't think we can really grasp a piece of art seen in tiny pieces.
As I usually do, I experimented with a variety of ideas for the concept but finally decided the technology had me beat.
When I began "A Space Fantasy" it was with no intention of creating a deep storytelling piece. I started it because I saw an interesting Apollo moon photo that I wanted to play with.
With some of my digital art, the piece can take weeks or even months to complete. I dabbled with this piece over and over again, removing elements, adding elements and just not getting the right vibe from it. I got to this point and just wasn't feeling it.
Then I decided part of the problem was that the foreground was too cluttered. I could only place elements within the piece at a distance. Alright, how could I expand the foreground?
I could potentially find another moon photo that had a similar landscape and try to splice them together. So I went out and tried to find something that fit. I chose this image from a totally different moon landing.
So fuck it. I had no expectations for this piece so if it never got used, it could still teach me something about my art. So I worked with it, adding the elements you see above. Nonetheless, I was still not finding much inspiration in the piece. I left it on my workspace for a few more days.
Then I went off the rails. I was browsing moon shots and found the following image.
I like that. I'm going to add it to the other side of the image and see if I can match it to the rest of the piece.
But now the elements previously added were unbalanced and now the sky looked all scrunched up at the top. That wouldn't do. So time to rearrange a few things and balance out the sky with the ground.
Ahh now things were beginning to make sense. The fantasy elements were taking shape nicely and larger earth worked better. Well I'd come this far. Lets add one more image to the mix.
This image worked, but worked better if I reversed it.
Yup I was back to having a super long, super detailed image which served no purpose. But I pushed on, adding infinite details and capping the image with two large rocks at either end. 59 revisions later I ended up with this.
Okay so what did it teach me?
First it taught me a lot about perspective. You'll note in the various images that things constantly change. In some images I've added feature just to take them away again later. As the perspective changed, the balance changed and the things in the foreground changed size. So if this lesson taught me anything, its more about perspective. This is something that every artist should work with over and over again.
Another thing it taught me was how to more seamlessly join multiple images. Working with matching colors and shapes to make it look like a single images as opposed to a collage.
This is the nature of experimental art. Its not to come away with a finished piece of art, but to learn a myriad of skills along the way.
I think the thing that I learned the most about though was how to remove an aspect. I was good at adding things in, but could I with equal skill remove it again later? Yes without a doubt I could.
Now what? Move on youngster, its time to do something else? Or was there still something to learn from this experiment?
Could I with equal precision now break apart the image into equally smaller images? Why? It had already been smaller images. But could I now cut it into three equally smaller images that I could then blow up in size, allowing the viewer to see the details better?
It took some experimenting, but yes it could be done.I ended up with these three perfectly sized images of the original.
So perhaps the concept of Deep Storytelling isn't lost because I found a way to triptych the image and that could be an interesting skill to have at some point in the future.
When it comes to experimental art, especially when you are dealing with a conceptual idea like Deep Storytelling, its important to remember that its not the overall idea but all the small ideas you learn along the way that all lead to something big.
If you would like more information on the Deep Storytelling or experimental art, please feel free to contact me.
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