Contact me at: artist@lizscape.com
The Technique is Called Time Art
The work I do is mostly focused on commissioned portraits personalized to the subject's interests and individual lifestyle. To this end, any given art piece might collect or synthesize multiple media plus objects from prior work, based on a more thorough re-doing of the whole or a part of a given scheme. This is enabled by digital photography. Digital photographs of original studies are incorporated in the synthesis of a new work. Ultimately, earlier metaphors take on a new tempo, are enhanced or are presented from a deeper understanding over time. The newest combinations express a sincere attitude that no piece is ever finished, and reconsideration can lead to a more perfect vision. Similar to print making (wood block/lithograph, serigraph/intaglio), the art is sometimes recreated from an original first image, which can be re-colored, varied in size, varied in dimension. Unlike printmaking, each piece is a transforming agent, intended to discover new themes and become a variant. Thus I call the media Time Art1.
By naming the media Time Art a double meaning is implied, since I have taken on the challenge of describing multiple times in one picture or, if you will, incorporating a motif that shows the passing of time. When you are young time travels slowly and as you get older it moves faster. In today's global web environment, time is even more a dual theme with space, since time zones are so readily crossed. But how do you depict time in art? What if you want to show multiple times of day in one picture or need to convey overlapping dimensions of past, present and future time? To solve this dilemma, I developed a new vocabulary. The general guidelines for a Time Art vocabulary define its application (technique) as follows:
E.g., layers are spatial (convex for future, concave for past), and can be either self-contained "present" planes, or have engineering angles to convey internal (mind's escape) space. Alternate forms of space are used to convey a floating universe infused with movement, and spontaneous in form. Thus, layers might be constructed using aerial perspective, or concentric depth, or by using heavier lines to trace a void, to highlight a negative space surrounding an object. Layers emerge from literal land/sea/air imagery combined with illusionary (receding) space.
E.g., luminescent, blurred color conveys a "future" time plane, use of a parent (blue) color conveys the present and it's child (blue green) will symbolize a connection to another time (past); alternatively, rainbow edges (reflected light) will depict imaginings of a future universe, interwoven at the edges of the "current/present" horizontal plane. I also use mathematical sets to identify the designs for multiple time universes: to this purpose, a pattern for a frontal and back layer can be reversed, the patterns can be flipped vertically or rotated to convey a range of times like disjoint, unifying, complementary or intersecting time.
E.g., audio imagery (rising and falling waveforms provide a simile) suggests that we have eyes to hear, or an awareness of things that are dim or loud. These abstract waveforms seem to rise and fall in rhythm with the time zone.
Overall, each picture is tailored to the particular mood and personal history of the subject.
Metaphor works to disentangle the subject's reality, interests, and feelings from perception or the fantasy landscape a person escapes to3. A further distinction is made for remembered things (memory, dreams) versus the 'here and now'. Consequently, the protean nature of time and the internal monologue exist as a separate landscape or sometimes as a slightly overlapping plane of objects that are distinguishable from reality and from who the person is perceived to be by others. That is, the artist strives to differentiate between who a person is (internal landscape) vs. whom they are perceived to be. In some senses, the artist may use intuition to envision what the person might become.
I often provide a written legend for a picture that is specific to the subject. In one subtle example of the technique, a subject was set into her foreshadowed (envisioned) future by placing her sideways and treating the subject as both ground/horizon and silhouette, which I call a "person scape". In fact, you could see the subject as gentle grassy, hills or as a female outline; the sepia colored shapes floated in and out of focus and aspects of the figure were intended to recede to allow the effects of distance to take over. In the "person/landscape" I use Venn diagram concepts (overlapping shapes) for a coincidence of edges to cause the picture planes to shift, and to create an illusion of time shifting. Ultimately, this highlights a role change: the interplay in Time Art between reality, perception and imagination.
Notes
1Copyright Elizabeth D. Zeisler, July 2003
2 The Greek prototype for nacheinander refers to objects perceived in time (sound), while nebenender defines objects perceived one after another in space (visual); an object is a person, place, thing or concept
3 The soliloquy technique in Ulysses by James Joyce alludes to an interior monologue. Here, relevant references to the Odyssey resurrect memory (past) during the interior monologue, as well as the day's happenings. Time Art resurrects memory likewise. One graphic reference used by Joyce is putting your feet on backwards (reversing the stars) to signify an altered lifestyle. In fact, there is a rich literary precedent for describing multiple time spaces simultaneously, but a paltry artistic one. Exceptions include Salvidor Dali's 'Persistence of Memory' paintings and Monet's 'Water Lilies' series showing the same scene under different light at different times of day.