Botanics Revisited IV

Abstract

Abstract Botanics Revisited IV takes its starting point from my personal attachment to the New Zealand bush – isolating the foliage qualities of texture, colour, light filtration, patterning and visual layering in software programs such as Photoshop®, Illustrator® and After Effects® to create parallels to thought processes. The first steps are undertaken by printing a simple mathematical triangular pattern on watercolour paper (reflective of how information and experience link to unconscious cultural knowledge and emotional stories, directing the way we interact with and perceive the world) and then I let my mind wander while brushing pigment into the above, each stage in turn being photographically documented, to see the texture growing like an organic mass, thoughts and reactions connecting, creating understanding and the personal within the boundaries of the pattern. Secondly, a time-based data projection is created by transferring the above watercolour documentation into After Effects®; exploring editing, filtering, scale, speed, rotation and layering images as possible visual vehicles to mimic memory storage and recall in the brain. The multifaceted and constantly changing nature of the artworks reflects how the brain tries to make sense of the visual world, searching for similarities between the here and now and what we have done and seen before; our current mood and mind state overlaying our prior experience, filtering and combining the here and now with what has been.