Neil Chenery approached me back in 1998 with an interview request for his online magazine Hoteye. The questions touched me and many levels of my work and within a few days we’d become internet friends and shortly after I asked Neil to take over the design and management of my website. This friendship was cemented in 2001 when I visited Neil in Melbourne, Australia and stayed for several months – together we explored Australia. My website design has evolved over the years and I’ve always been surprised and excited by the clarity of vision Neil has consistently maintained – his latest designs now being my three web blogs Addenda, Cyphers and this one Locus.
Neil has now updated Hoteye with some of his recent personal work.
“These images are part of a digital sketchbook and are source images for a proposed new series of larger works. I normally use abstract works on paper, small scale, with lots of marks and textures as the source for larger works. In the past these were then photocopied and smaller details masked and cut out to be later enlarged as drawings or paintings. Visually the result is along the same lines as Leonardo Da Vinci seeing landscapes and images in stains on the wall. With this technique I am using my own visual language and mark-making to produce the subject matter for more fully realised images. The final images go through a further stage remaining in flux for as long as possible, often ending upside down, before they are finally resolved.
Instead of photocopying this new work is manipulated in PhotoShop from a wide range of different sources and being digital allows me to crop, scale and distort the images with ease in ways that previously weren’t available or easy to achieve. Just like the earlier works, most of these images come from unexpected details from larger images, hence the series title “fragments”. At this point I’m not sure where this latest body of work is headed but, in turn, that’s a critical factor in keeping the work fresh and enjoyable to work on.”
Neil Chenery May, 2009
