Art and Design Club

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(Samples of Sarah's digital artworks)

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Previous entries:

Modern Art, Part II

Modern Art, Part I

Remembered

Ansel Adams ?A Portrait of God’s Body

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 God Is Everywhere. Art Is Everywhere.

            - A Marriage of Art and Technology

 
I hope someday even a family with the lowest income in a Third World country can afford to hang the pictures that I create. That is my ULTIMATE DREAM.

~ Sarah Cheung

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As a traditionally trained artist myself, I've always had an unfriendly and unclear relationship with Technology.

Although technology has helped other art forms such as music, video and film in many ways, it doesn't seem to help the making of the FINEST art form, paintings.

The machine is such a rigid, controlling and disobeying thing. It has a mind of its own. It thinks it is perfect in every sense. When I use the computer to draw, the paint brush on programs like Adobe Photoshop or Painter never works like the brush I buy in a traditional art supply store. It doesn't allow any human kind of spontaneity, authenticity, emotional release and true self-expression. I feel controlled, very controlled when I draw with the computer. I feel like I become part of the machine.

On the other hand, there is a MYSTERIOUS process of letting go and surrendering when we are creating a work of art. It is somewhat like an out-of-body state. There comes a moment when something else (some might call it Grace) takes charge and we become an instrument for that something to perform. With a certain amount of awareness, we still see how the color goes, how the brush stroke dances and how the lines are formed. However it is NOT we who are in control.

Without such a process, there will never be a masterpiece. And without such a process, the work of art will not itself carry a transcending quality.

The best complement I have ever got for my artwork so far was one time when someone said to me, I am not afraid to die anymore if I know I will come back to see this painting again. He was looking at my painting "Tears". He didn't know that the painting was mine; it was hanging in my friend's house back then. Still, I'd rather he doesn't know. I hardly think I was the one who painted it either. However, something was torn deeply inside all of a sudden. I question myself if I have that kind of independent strength to suffer for beauty for the rest of my life.

I don't know how we could pass on this kind of understanding to a machine. Is it that we have not established a technology that is fully capable of functioning this way, or that the machine is just a dead thing that has no tolerance for the expression of a human's spirit? I am not sure. All I know is that I have not yet seen a digitally made artwork that moves me, that makes my heart grip like a painting does.

Computer art has never been elevated to the state of Fine Art. However I don't believe that is the end of the story. I still believe in the superiority in the human spirit which is the ultimate order for all forces of nature and all matter. I believe the machine could help us create art that is also emotionally transcending, and help bring our human consciousness to a higher level.

In order to marry these two sides of matter (art and technology) so as to create fine art's quality pictures, a radical breakthrough of our traditional thinking is required.

I remember when I first worked as a graphic designer years ago, every time when I saw pictures, I had the urge to blend, to mold, to manipulate, and to compose them together so that they become a totally new creation. With my strong illustration background, the merging and blending seemed natural for me.

The computer, if we know how to make use of it, it works like a magic wand that transforms ordinary things and creates many rebirths.
However this blending and merging of photographs starts to lose its appeal to me after a while. I miss the organic charm of the irregular brush strokes, the strength and the feel of the movement in traditional painting, the colors flowing like a loss of control and the blood surging in my veins like I am about to faint.

If the computer can blend and merge pictures so well, why can't we apply the same technique in blending and merging fine art's elements, things that are much more spontaneous and human with an relief-like quality, such as paint brush strokes, rugged lines and unfinished color blotches? Although the computer still doesn't do these very well, it at least provides the flexibility to create every element in separate files, and with a touch of its high-tech magic (with different filters and other features), it does a fabulous job blending and composing them all together in a way that is irritatingly interesting and breathtakingly beautiful.

The best thing about creating a picture on the computer is its non-discriminative ability to produce pictures of consistent quality. With one click of the button, you can produce an unlimited amount of pictures that are absolutely the same as each other. Unlike the paintings in the museum ?no matter how good a forger is, there is no way to reproduce a painting exactly the same as the original one. Although we still can buy a print copy of Van Gogh's Starry Night or Monet's Lilies, our hearts are already lost to the canvas behind the solemn walls of the museum.

My wilder thinking is that someday we will develop a technology that would allow these computer-generated images to be painted on the canvas with fine art mediums such as acrylic or oil-based paint.

Some, definitely including myself, might question the loss of intangible value resulting from the computer' ability to mass produce artworks. Naturally we fear that the artwork will lose its exclusiveness or uniqueness from this process. I actually have thought about this a lot.

Yes, it is true that we get bored if we listen to the same music again and again. However it is also true that we get excited and inspired when new music arrives. So it is more about the level of accessibility to a new product instead of the quantity of its production.

Also I have a rebellion to the psychology of scarcity? I don't think mass production of the artwork so that it becomes so cost effective that it is available to almost everyone, would lower its level of beauty and transcending effect.

On the other hand, limited production is always an alternative option if some commercial factors set in.

I hope someday even a family with the lowest income in a Third World country can afford to hang the pictures that I create. That is my ULTIMATE DREAM.

As a passionate and often lonely human being who was born with the anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness like every one else, I have a constant unfulfilled longing that often leads to an urgent need to communicate myself in visual statements.

I seek NOT the meaning of life, but rather the opportunity to be fully human, which requires my complete willingness to express my innermost sensations and subjective feelings towards everything that I have experienced.

As much as I would love to make peace with everything in my life, I won't stop radically questioning the culture we are in, which includes the traditional system, both moral and aesthetic.

I hope my works will touch as many as possible.

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