Hallucinatory Vision and the Blurring of the Subject in Jeremy Blake's `Time-Based Paintings'

Abstract

From the turn of the 21st century until his death in 200 Jeremy Blake worked at the convergence of animation, digital technology and painting, synthesizing them through the use of cinematic strategies. This article discusses the debt Blake's early abstract works owe to the experimental animated films of the Visual Music artists and American post-war Color Field painters. During this period, Blake applied his exceptional facility with emerging animation software to sequential figure/ground abstractions based on literary narrative structures. Subsequently, Blake shifted from `time-based painting' to richly textured non-narrative biographical sketches created in collaboration with maverick protagonists in contemporary popular music. The visuality of Blake's hallucinatory moving images intensified emotionally as new digital software became available. The deep hybridity of his visual compositions, transmitted through constant fades and overlays of photo-based images and abstracted color patches, doodles and animation characters, create a richly textured bridge between subjective consciousness and the world of appearances.