Kelvin Valley Art

Artist Statement of Pratice

I’m not big on categorising myself generally and when it comes to choosing a creative discipline which best describes my work I am equally conflicted.

Despite a career of over 30 years in the commercial art industry I never really considered myself an “artist”.

My job titles covered a variety of descriptions from graphic technician to photographic retoucher with graphic designer appearing now and then too. When I went self-employed I described myself as a ‘Graphic Artist’ on my business cards.

That was perhaps as close as I got to using the ‘a’ word. When my career came to a natural break, I decided to return to further education to upgrade my skill set and an Art and Design course seemed a natural fit. Immediately I finally felt like a proper artist.

The vast and endless possibilities of all the disciplines appealed to me from painting to printmaking, from sketching to sculpture. Everything was of interest. My only limitation was the time to do them all. I always had the feeling that that if I tried any of the disciplines, I could eventually learn how to do them properly. But some appealed more than others.

I found myself drawn to three-dimensional work. Not necessarily sculpture in the traditional sense, but utilising aspects of it, normally in association with digital design and printed components.

Of particular interest was a subject I had never heard of until about three years ago, the concept of the artist’s book. Which, as described by Wikipedia are:

works of art that utilise the form of the book… often published in small editions, and sometimes produced as one-of-a-kind objects.

Wikipedia

This was an art form, which I find myself constantly drawn back to. Each year of my studies has included one unit where I used the artist book as my method of expressing a solution to a concept (1st year ‘The Martial Artist Book’ 2nd year – ‘Blah, Blah, Blah’) and now this year’s ‘Castles - the Might the Myth and the Magic’).

Skills required in producing each of those pieces included: graphic design, illustration and model making as well as an interest in history, culture and philosophy.

Whatever type of artist results from blending these skills is perhaps what I am.