this variation on my original node frame should provide a more robust seal around the print and also have the capacity to take thicker print mounts, even stretched canvases.
i’m thinking about building a new shop on a different domain to sell my work in these frames. this site is really the complete online manifestation of my output and has a strong ‘digital arts’ theme. people are not buying digital art like they buy paintings. partly because of the immature nature of a lot of digital art on the net. saying this however, i do feel that the best of the digital art out there is the most pioneering, intelligent and exciting art being made today in any medium. of course i would say this:)
so digital art is, more often than not, immature as an art form - what do i mean by this? the digital art market is immature with few if any tested models for serious artists exploring the medium to sell their work through. digital art is rarely seen in the serious commercial galleries and art fairs. there exists no established place where art buyers go to look for real investment in serious digital artists. art.com doesn’t count LOL
by definition there cannot be an established outlet of this nature being as digital art is not yet established itself within the wider art world.
there is also the question of mature subject matter and themes for digital art. a lot of digital art is woefully puerile in it subject matter. you now the sort of thing: fantasy art, erotic art and the crude post processing of bad digital photography. this 21st Century digital folk art is really just the product of the first generation of net users who were predominantly techies and had to be techies in order to manipulate the software. it isn’t that techies are any less creative than your average painting artist. there is a lot of techy art on the net that has just as much compositional invention and strength as the sort of painted art people are paying big bugs for in Cork Street. Its just that artist working within conventional mediums have an almost infinitely rich pool of artistic language and subject matter to draw upon that has evolved over many centuries. modern painters may not like to concede that they are repeating anything that has been done in the last century, but the languages and themes of modern painting are now so thoroughly ingrained in our culture that a painter can use them like an english poetry uses the english language. a poetry does not have to reinvent his core language to make his statement. he couldn’t better the fundamentals of the language if he tried. we can modify the superficial character of the language, but 99% of the vocabulary and grammar is universally understood and can not be improved upon by one individual. the vocabulary and grammar of painting is also effortless used by painters and there is little radical innovation at this level left to be explored. digital art however is only just beginning to find its own inherent grammatical structures that will evolve out of the peculiarities of different digital tools. many of the themes seen in the ‘digital folk art’ i have described have been borrowed from the techies sci-fi stimulated childhood imaginations. these are not the themes that will become intrinsic to digital forms as time goes on however. i predict that in the 22nd Century that a mediocre digital artist, like the mediocre painter today, will be able to make art that draws on a rich history of art language and subject matter and make digital imagery that looks to all eyes like ’sophisticated’ mature art. the craft of digital art making will be universally appreciated and artist will find new ways to make digital art unique works. print technology will evolve and new accepted art objects will become convention. the digital print, in whatever form it takes, will become as ubiquitous and converted as the painted canvas is today. only however, hopefully, it won’t crack, fade or peel like the painted canvas does today after just a few decades.
