An Outlet For A Different Kind Of Art

...well, at least a different kind of art than I usually make. The picture below is of what I guess would be called a "mixed media" piece. I went to the drugstore and printed out some of the photos I've taken of interesting electrical outlets, then cut them out, glued them to a piece of cardboard, and embellished them variously with acrylic paint, ink, decoupage medium, and a bunch of other random materials. So there are drawn/painted elements in the piece but also photographic elements, only I've deliberately tried to blur the distinction between photo and non-photo.



(Large size image can be viewed here on my Flickr album)

I have a bit of a fascination with electrical outlets (feel free to send pictures of them! Especially ones from different countries and any unusual ones, or outlets that are oddly oriented in walls, or covered in varying layers of paint, etc.) and my youngest brother Ryan (who just turned 18) has something of an appreciation for them as well. So for his birthday I made this piece. I figured at the very least it would be something interesting to hang in his future dorm/apartment/etc. Anyway I just figured I would post an image of it here because it is a very different style than I usually do. Normally I am more inclined to draw very realistic pictures where I have an idea at the beginning of what the end result will look like. My Difference Engine painting is an example of this; I had that thing visualized right from the beginning.

But for things like this outlet painting/collage piece I find it a bit scary to make them, almost, because at the beginning I have no idea what they will ultimately look like. With this piece I started with only a very vague idea and then just kept adding elements and colors until the whole thing looked "right" and "balanced". And I actually rather liked it in the end; it has very vivid color (hooray for acrylics!) and a lot more texture than my artwork usually does.

Oh and I don't think any type of art I can do (weird mixed media or hyper-realistic) is better or worse fundamentally, I just think they are very different and it is a wholly different state of mind I must enter in each case: one being very focused on emulating something external to me, and the other focused on using senses directly and updating the image in front of me in real-time in response to the feedback I get after doing something. (If that makes any sense, I am not actually very good at explaining this sort of thing).