ipad Paintings

The paintings below were created on the iPad during a period of approximately 4 months.  I have completed these while also working with gouache, watercolor and oil.  Although I was initially reluctant to use the ipad for "fine art" it became apparent after some experimentation that it allows you to do things not possible with traditional mediums.

I've certainly met with some resistance from artist friends who are in the Luddite camp, although the hostility against computer technology is understandable as computers have become commonplace since Thomas Pynchon wrote his article in the New Yorker in 1984 on the advancement of technology.  He predicted that the next big thing would be when the "curves of research and development in artificial intelligence, molecular biology and robotics all converge".  We haven't quite reached that state, and painting on the iPad probably won't get us any closer.  But there's a need for many, including myself, to find a refuge against the encroachment against ubiquitous technology and old fashioned paint is the perfect foil.

But, the iPad does offer some seemingly minor innovations that are occasionally worth the trade off to the tactile nature of traditional painting mediums.  One of the unique features gained by use of this new technology is the ability to zoom into details.  Now the whole notion of scale and micro vs. macro can be nullified.  On the iPad you have the ability to zoom into a minute detail, making it the macro section and reversing roles.  

The other technical innovation is the access to layers.  This allows one to go back and forth between foreground, background and in areas in between.  It also allows the ability to adjust transparency and move the layers at will so that they aren't static.

Creating the "original" work of art certainly brings to mind the ideas of originality and authenticity first written about by Walter Benjamin in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.  These ideas were carried one step further by John Berger who stated that "For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free."  My work is in a traditional painterly area, but it does place this work square in the arena talked about by Walter Benjamin since there's no one "original" and thus no one piece has the aura of authenticity.  They have no "unique place where it happens to be."