VisibleMan
website: www.visibleman.net
My background and field of study in school was fine arts, design and illustration. As a student, I was able to explore the different disciplines of both music and the visual arts. Georgia State's core art curriculum included coursed of study in drawing, painting, ceramics, sculpture, illustration and other types of visual expression. Eventually, I landed in the illustration program.
My love of the great storybook illustrators of the turn of the century, Maxfield Parrish, Arthur Rackham, Dean Cornwell and others, had always been a source of deep inspiration. When I learned that this was something that one could study in school and choose as a career path, I was dumbfounded. This, it seemed was the thing that I most wanted to do.
At the same time, my studies in art history introduced me to, among other things, the paintings of the European Northern Renaissance. This period encompassed France, the Netherlands, Austria and Germany from the fourteenth century through to the sixteenth. The Flemish masters such as Jan van Eyck, the Master of Flemalle, Albrecht Durer, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Hieronymus Bosch and others were making jewel-like representational paintings, mostly of a religious nature and bursting with iconography - the representation of archetypal entities in the form of common everyday items. These beautiful works had their origin in the manuscript illuminations of the middle ages, and like the storybook illustrators, they captured my imagination, and have remained a major influence in my work ever since.
I have also been deeply influenced by Persian manuscript illumination and Moorish art and architecture. Transcendent themes, classical architecture, the human figure, symbols and a certain degree of drawing prowess and craftsmanship are some of my basic elements and ideals. Other ideas that have worked their way into my paintings are burning cities, ufo's, sacred symbols, tumultuous seas, volcanoes, powerful women, wise men, winged beings and fish.
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