Statement
Over the past twelve years or so I've accumulated a number of short statements, each of which riffs on similar themes, but with intriguing variations, so rather than presenting a single definitive statement here, I'm offering a number of edited views, some written by me, some by other people. Notably Patrick Davies, Aidan Quinn and Bridget Sterling, who bring an invaluable external voice as a counterpoint to my own writing.
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v1
Chuck Elliott claims to have used the first Apple Macintosh imported to the UK in 1984, the same year Apple launched their computers, with Ridley Scott’s now infamous Orwellian advertising campaign. In 2005 he moved to Bristol, where he now works full time on his sublime, fluid studies in light, colour, motion and liquid geometry.
Delighting in the machines’ ability to hone and craft sculptural drawings, colour spaces are manipulated, light levels finely tuned, and a myriad of images and series of derivations are produced, using processes analogous to the way in which modern music is realised.
Chuck Elliott is reinterpreting the essence of abstract fine art printmaking for the digital age. Pure logical progression.
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v2
I've been working as a digital artist full time since 1992, after graduating from the old Hornsey School of Art in London. It continues to be an interesting journey. About twelve years ago I decided to focus in on the idea of using digital drawing tools to create studies that explore line, light, colour and geometry. Often liquid geometry. It seemed that the digital toolset offered an opportunity to advance the modernist study of geometric form into new, more complex, more intriguing areas than had previously been possible with pen and paint.
Following the example of contemporary music production, digital data can be honed, remixed, layered, edited and sculpted. Finessing final compositions in ways that are clearly analogous with modern film, photography and music production. Pure logical progression.
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I'm drawing from nature, from maths, from architecture and from life. The drawings are figured by the rhythms and beauty of number systems and explore the basic building blocks of everything we see around us, line, light, volume and colour. In that sense, they get right to the heart of the most basic components of our lived experience. Studies are concerned with overlaying number patterns and exploring how those patterns can generate form, glazing with colours and using light to bring the underlying studies to life as single moments in time.
The works I generate are large format C type photographic prints. Original digital drawings exposed onto photographic paper by laser light, developed, fixed and washed in the traditional manner. These C type prints are then bonded to clear perspex using the Diasec process. The glazed pieces can be laser cut to shape, framed, or simply mounted directly to the wall.
Alongside this main body of work, I'm also exploring 3d printing and digital screen art which offers intriguing opportunities to add time, motion and sculptural form to the drawings. As computer systems become faster and more powerful, so the opportunity to work with denser, more complex data sets increases, and as such it seems likely that the studies will become more complex and more engaging over the coming years.
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v3
Chuck Elliott overlaps the precision and order of symmetrical geometry with mesmerizing digitally drawn non-repeating patterns. He explores notions of contemporary drawing using a high end computing system and the latest digital drawing tools. His vibrant prints are energetic yet rhythmically soothing; pools of colour ripple, whilst smooth chromatic ribbons flow with electronic clarity, sheening like a lacquered metallic surface. There is reference to psychedelia in the visual indulgence of Elliott’s work, but it is rooted intellectually by his meticulous attention to detail and the mathematical application of numeric formulae and 3D simulation programmes.
The intensity of Elliott’s work offers a dynamic visual aesthetic for both modern and classical settings. The sense of free-flowing vitality, under-layered with an appealing sense of order, replicates the familiarity of architectural rhythm and asymmetrical structures found within the natural world. Elliott’s work connects us with energies which govern the geometry of life, whilst plugging into the processes which expand the reaches of contemporary culture. There is also a departure from traditional forms of framing. Elliott will occasionally frame his printed work behind glass, yet the majority sits between two plates of Perspex, with the front mounting as a clear, high-grade, UV filter. Sitting without a border, the resulting work has an extremely crisp and highly durable finish.
Through digital imagery Elliott questions what drawing can be. His experimental curiosity has led to new work with moving images and the idea of ‘digital fluency’. This also calls into question notions of ownership, as this artwork exists as a cache of data rather than a physical object. It has multiple options for display, from domestic projectors and idle widescreen televisions to large multi-screens in corporate spaces.
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Bridget Sterling, Bath Contemporary
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v4
Chuck Elliott (b. 1967, London) is a pioneer of digitally generated art. He claims to have used the first Apple Macintosh imported to the UK in 1984, the same year Apple launched the computers with their now infamous Orwellian advertising campaign.
Acquiring his own machine in 1989, he has been drawing, sculpting, editing and compositing digitally ever since. Graduating in 1992, he founded a succession of small, successful studios in London. In 2005 he moved to Bristol, where he now works full time on his sublime, fluid studies in light, colour, motion and liquid geometry.
Delighting in the machines' ability to hone and craft sculptural drawings, render, edit, mix, cut, paste, sculpt, and re edit, colour spaces are manipulated, light levels finely tuned, and a myriad of images and series of derivations are produced, using processes analogous to the way in which modern music is realised.
Chuck Elliott is reinterpreting the essence of abstract fine art printmaking for the digital age. Pure logical progression.
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v5
Since graduation in ‘92, I have pursued the business of creating images, initially by setting up my own studio on Gt Marlborough St, in Soho, in ’94, as a vehicle for developing my working practice, and more recently by moving to a larger space in Bristol.
During my twelve years working as a commercial artist I was commissioned by Miuccia Prada, Yohji Yamamoto, Apple, Sony and Nike, amongst many other clients. I also drew the British Airways and Fifa logos in those first twelve years.
For the past twelve years, I have been fortunate enough to be able to support my studio solely through my work as a fine artist and contemporary printmaker, participating in gallery shows and art fairs, throughout the UK, Europe, the USA, and Asia. The work has become steadily more collectable, and I now enjoy a reputation as a noted contemporary printmaker, with good representation at galleries in the UK, as well as national and international fairs, and group shows such as MTV ReDEFINE and Spectra 1, both in the UK and abroad.
Through my work, I have been able to explore some of the latest production techniques available to the contemporary artist, and by constant reinvestment in the studio, I am now in a position to create larger and more ambitious pieces.
My practice is expanding from the clean geometry of the ‘Kinetic’ series to encompass a more fluid dynamic. Exploring colour, line and volume relationships, with themes including ‘poured forms’, ‘captive light’ and ‘fluid geometry’, my work endeavours to capture and retransmit the vigour and vibrancy of refracted and reflected light and kinetic motion. I currently employ the medium of laser exposed metallic Lambda prints for the majority of my work (effectively digital Cibachromes), but am also keen to diversify into other media. My practice is endeavouring to push back the boundaries of traditional printmaking, with direct digitised drawing, and a fluid use of dynamic colour spaces and captured light.
The latest body of liquid geometry studies explores new ways of drawing and digitally sculpting form, using 3d computer modelling techniques. Forms that have been almost impossible to explore or visualise previously. Complex soft geometries are created, using both maths and intuition as a generator for these new sculptural drawings.
Following on in a long line of artists' work, I'm endeavouring to progress the study of abstract and geometric art, hopefully in some intriguing new directions. I see the work less as a set of completed drawings, and more as an ongoing exploration into form, colour and to some extent lyrical and rhythmic motion.
Dynamic light / fluid colour / captured luminance / brilliant incandescence / kinetic forms / live geometry
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v6
Chuck Elliott's practice is concerned with a fluid investigation of colour, movement and light. Entirely computer generated, free form shapes are cropped, recoloured and enhanced as if editing in a camera view. Hovering between printmaking and photography, these pure colour fields retain a clarity that belies the source. The images are produced as Lambda photographic prints.
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Patrick Davies, Davies and Tooth