Foundations
Older Works
ABOUT FOUNDATIONS
Every work of art starts with a mark, whether it is a line on a piece of paper, the stroke of a brush, the first character of a piece of literature, or the first note of a musical score. Art grows out of marks. As the artist’s hand moves across the paper, committing their idea to a physical medium, a change takes place. What once existed only in thought, private and personal, is translated into a form which can be shared. Increasingly these marks are not just made with pencil on paper, but also with the movement of a mouse, a tap on a keyboard or the swipe of a finger on a screen.
The growing acceptance of art in a digital form is something which interests me, having spent a substantial part of my career working with digital tools. Like the transition from thought to the physical medium, the transition from physical to digital represents another change of state in the process of realising ideas.
Foundations is a collection of 520 unique thumbnail sketches that propose the elevation of simple marks – the starting points of a bigger picture – to artworks in their own right. Each sketch represents the beginning of an idea, some could germinate and grow into a fully formed work of art, while others may never sprout and see the light of day, but nonetheless still carry this potential.
I like the idea that these simple marks are also open to the viewer’s own interpretation, that any one could be the spark for a completely different idea. The work encompasses a number of themes that I have visited in my work previously – changes of state, rebirth, reinvention, and external factors that have been an influence on my own life. In addition the works are a reflection of my own technical journey from traditional media beginnings to current digital tools and workflows.
The project began with a series of 520 20mm square pencil sketches drawn in isolation with no reference. As a designer this is often the way that I begin my creative process, with small thumbnail sketches. These were digitised and each sketch placed within its own individual 3D rendered display case to visually affirm its importance in the creative process. The final stage was the assignment of a title for each piece. In each instance the title reflected the first thing that came into my mind as the file was saved – more instinctive than considered.
The title ‘foundations’ refers to the purpose and potential of each of the 520 sketches. Any sketch might be the starting point of something bigger and is a celebration of the parts that make up the whole. Foundations is also the starting point for Gravy Editions – the first project to be offered for sale and an opportunity to invest at ground level before my profile in this space increases.
SELECTED FOUNDATIONS
ABOUT THE COLLECTION
The collection consists of 520 unique hand drawn Foundation sketches. Each sketch has been digitised and presented in its own 3D rendered case which also has a unique combination of features.
The wood of the base, the colour of the background drapery, and the pattern on each base combine to add to the individuality of each finished image – with no two alike. 512 of the cases are composed of these base elements, with a further 8 limited editions featuring a gold base as shown below.
Each image will be available for purchase as an NFT. Buyers will receive a high quality JPG of their chosen image at a resolution of 3000 x 3000 pixels – large enough to print to a size of the square of A3 if they wish to output a physical version of the artwork. For the best reproduction it is recommended that these works be inkjet printed using archival quality inks on fine art paper. Unlike many NFT collections available these works have not been programmatically generated. Each of the 520 images have been individually considered, manually composited, adjusted and saved.
Foundations is my first creative foray into the NFT space and represents 9 months of development to arrive at the final collection. It will be followed in the next year with at least 2 further projects that I am currently working on.
All of my works will be promoted and sold under the Gravy Editions banner. My passion as an artist is about exploring ideas and creating powerful visual statements. Gravy Editions is my brand and my signature.
Foundations NFTs are available to purchase at
OLDER WORKS
PAINT & RENDER : GRAVY 2007
PAINT & RENDER : GRAVY 2019
PAINT & RENDER : GRAVY 2009
PAINT & RENDER : GRAVY 2008
PAINT & RENDER : GRAVY 2009
PAINT & RENDER : GRAVY 2008
PAINT & RENDER : GRAVY 2005
PAINT & RENDER : GRAVY 2008
ABOUT THE ARTIST
For as long as I can remember I have loved to create. My earliest artistic outputs were probably no different to most children – happy with a crayon in hand and a sheet of paper, or a living room wall as a canvas. I would lose myself for hours, drifting off into worlds of my own imagination and committing them to paper.
I have always experimented, never entirely satisfied with following the same path as everyone else. Where some children enjoyed making model aircraft, following the instructions to build and paint a perfect duplicate of the picture on the box, I felt the need to take it further. My model aircraft might end up at the centre of a story, crashed and half buried in a hand built diorama, with the pilot hanging from a parachute in a carefully modelled tree.
My love of models continued alongside my developing technical abilities with pencil & paint throughout my school years, until at art school, where it translated into a passion for sculpture. While I followed a more commercial path at university, choosing to study Graphic Design, I still managed to integrate a strong 3 dimensional aspect to my work. In my final degree show, wall sculptures inspired by quotes from literature sat alongside brand, identity and packaging projects.
Since graduating I have enjoyed a career of over 30 years as a Graphic Designer, Art Director and sometime Copywriter. While I am grateful for the life this has allowed me to live, the commercial nature of the work has not always been creatively fulfilling.
To counter this frustration I continued to develop my own works alongside my day job. I have exhibited occasionally and sold work during this time, but what really drives me is the love of experimenting, communicating my ideas and tinkering with new techniques and technologies.
My earlier works – as shown in some of the examples above – mixed different physical media and sculptural techniques. Fine woodwork, carving, modelling, casting, embroidery and numerous other technical disciplines found their way into my work where I deemed it appropriate to the story within each piece.
Quality of finish is a key feature of my work and something that I take pride in. I like to think of myself as a craftsman in the traditional sense as much as an artist, and mastery of technique is something that I have always striven for. But equally, the thinking and story behind each of my works carries the same weight – the idea is just as important to me as the final image.
In the mid 90’s I was introduced to 3D software through my day job as a Graphic Designer. It would be safe to say that this initial exposure to the endless possibilities of creating on a computer changed my way of working completely. While I still occasionally drift back into traditional media; drawing, painting and constructing works when the mood takes me, the majority of my craft now happens in front of a screen.
What I love about this way of working is the speed at which I can experiment with ideas and iterate when I arrive at an execution that I like. As the power of 3D software and computers has increased over the years, the potential for richer and more complex works of art has grown. In recent years the next step in the way that I envisage creating my art has appeared in the form of VR. My early experiments modelling and sculpting in VR have been very promising, and while this is still young technology and not yet as powerful as desktop hardware, it has already become a part of my workflow. As technology continues to develop and new ways of working come to light I will continue to experiment and expand the scope of my art.
“Art makes life more palatable.”
GRAVY
© 2022. All images and content remain the sole property of Gravy Creative Ltd and may not be copied, printed, re-distributed, modified or posted elsewhere without written authorisation from the creator.
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