The online exhibitions are all hosted by Kunstmatrix, and are all fully interactive with walkthrough, guided tours, catalogue and image information. The work includes traditional photography, manipulated images, abstraction and graphics. The subjects fall into three distinct categories; real observations, imagined forms and visual considerations of pertinent theoretical issues. There is no theme or issue in the work.

Roland Barthes said that a specific photograph is never distinguished from its referent - the thing the photograph represents. In a photograph the subject becomes the object, but as Patricia Hannah argues in an excerpt from her play 'Conversations with a Photograph', the referent of a painting is its subject.

I am grateful to her for permission to include this amusing take on how we address image practices.

Click on the shows and follow the menu instructions. 

It is best to go to full screen to enhance the experience. 

On Constructing The Work

My work is constructed on a method of rapid realisation, which sometimes works, and sometimes does not. It all depends on the taste and interpretation of the reader, and that is why I make it diverse. 

My approach, when beginning to make work, is to use randomness. 

I employ aleatoric methods, and see where they take me. Themes and issues, while being important, and difficult to ignore, tend to get in the way of originality. 

What you get from chance is something unexpected, and a starting point for the discovery of new ideas. Once a form catches my interest I carry out a review of what has happened, been made and has meaning. The outcome reveals itself in two distinct ways, what makes no sense, and what appears to have meaning. It is the former, however, which is more important because it demands curiosity and interpretation. If it makes sense, it is relying on received social experience, and removes interrogation. If it has never been encountered, and not likely to have been discovered, then it heightens my creative focus. 

Meaning has to have come from somewhere, but that is not the point of this approach.

The Creative Pathway

The next step is to question what it is, and to think hard about what distinguishes it from my own imagination and received influences. This does not mean ignoring traditions and innovations. It implies merely knowing the difference between conventions and personal understandings. It develops this by using critical faculties that separate useful ideas from those that feel inappropriate. This pathway stops me getting distracted by issues that might not be conducive to my creative potential.

The guidance of others is important, but has to be tempered by what I am capable of understanding at the junctions for choice. It is difficult to keep our sense of individuality separate from prevailing cultural fashions. I can say do it this way or that, but ultimately it is down to what I choose, and what I do with it. This is the creative state of feeling the freedom to find the stimulus of new forms and subjects, rather than just attempting to be original. To be clear, this is not about the working up of an idea, nor speculation about the subject matter of the final work; it is about finding things not previously encountered.

A view amongst theorists is that the producer of an image is the person who views the work. Although an image exists only by virtue of it being seen and interpreted by an individual, the impact of social education affects the values that people accept and accounts for what becomes popular. This is reinforced by an industry buying into making images which reflect populism, and round and round it goes. Work that takes an independent direction challenges this, and by respecting the viewer as a participant observer, encourages the notion that the viewer has a creative role to play. It, therefore, means that image makers who recognise this, produce work, which encourages individual thinking and creative energy. 

Work which follows this premise might be difficult, but does bring rewards.

On Digital Imaging

All images tell stories, even the most abstract offerings. We deal with different narratives in a variety of ways. There is no end to the possibilities that can be experienced, and by keeping an open mind, we see differing discourses developing. I think of image making as a medium demanding enjoyment and rigour in equal measure.

The advantages of digital imaging are numerous, but I like the fact that work can be distributed widely and with relative ease. It cannot be a substitute for a live gallery showing, yet to be able to make and curate art without having to negotiate with venue owners, and commission fees, makes it an attractive option for producing the work of my choice. Being able to set up virtual galleries, websites and other social media, means that a greater number of people can view my output than would ever be possible in the traditional settings. An additional bonus is the possibility of rehearsing and designing hanging plans for showing work in reality.

Digital tools allow speed and complexity, and can exist as screen based art or as designs to be reworked in more conventional forms and forums. Digital arts appear to be capturing collectors' interest, and the recent rise of on-line galleries is testimony to the viability of this way of working. Being able to use multimedia methods enhances the scope of what can be made; mixed media and intramedia techniques. 

Whether it is photography, drawing and painting, graphic design, filmmaking, 3D production or multi-media techniques, the freedom to explore and express without limits are other reasons to pursue these ways of working. 

Lessons Learned From Teaching Students

In practical terms, when I was teaching students the art of motion, and the relationship between the still frame and momentum, I would get them to consider ways of manipulating objects. The first method was to have them use (on camera, with continuous replay) stop frame technique with their own bodies. The sessions would be lengthy, but after several hours they would learn the relationship between time, interval and space. The technology was important in that it gave a window of several seconds lag replay up to the point of the next frame-grab. They learned to fly, metamorphose, and move outside their assumptions about what was possible. The point of the exercise was not to train animators, but to bring the physical closer to the psychological in a controlled way.

Another technique, I used, was a form of musical chairs. The students would bring five objects, which they placed on seats set up in a line, and then they would move to their right, looking at a neighbour's arrangement. The connections and interpretations were measured against the original intentions, and completely differing narratives would emerge. The measure was then the interaction of the finder and the found. Not always harmonious, but levelling.

I adopted the 'mood board', beloved of architects who I taught early in my career, but modified it to allow intervention. The students would put a collage on the wall and allow others to change or adapt their ideas. Much blood spilt, many lessons learned.

My favourite method was working with found footage. Students were asked to get any film, video or still material, from skips, old archives, in fact anything, which might be appropriated legitimately. The results were amazing. My memory, is of juxtapositions, which changed the diegesis (of the original material) into reconstructed narratives. The mechanism was editing and reforming the sense of the footage without any pre-planned strategy. What was revealing was that the results did not tend to make any sense of the original subjects, but rather abstracted the material.

Wind-up toys played an important part in revealing the usefulness of automatic methods. Two clockwork chickens placed close together would go into a dance and demonstrate parameters; dependent, independent and inter-dependent. Filming and reviewing the material allowed an analysis of a narrative produced by uncontrived human intervention. The process embedded the idea that anything observed (as a pattern) could provide the raw material for narrative and structured thinking.

These aleatory activities (in teaching and practice) allow the reworking of ideas that are cyclical, review driven, and bonding. Whether this results in representation or abstraction does not matter, because differing stimuli results in different results. If my work is deemed to be diverse, then it is because of this process.