My painting practice is concerned with the intersection of digital processes and traditional art-making techniques, playfully connecting digital and analog methods of production to draw upon the collective nostalgia so prevalent in today’s technology-saturated world.
My process begins with the collaging of naked bodies sourced from books, magazines or the internet, which are then digitally morphed, cut and layered in Photoshop into near-abstract forms. I then paint the resulting images in oil on canvas.
The source images are taken from internet pornography or erotic massage books and are often quite sexually explicit. After the extreme distortions these images undergo and the elimination of all contextual detail, they become mostly desexualised, shifting the focus from titillation to aesthetic contemplation.
I make these manipulations very apparent in my paintings, highlighting the way I have digitally altered the source imagery to produce something entirely new. The final painted pieces give a physicality and intentionality to these modifications, making something permanent and tangible out of the ephemeral, converting pixels to paint.
In this way, my work embodies a comforting return of the contemporary to the traditional as I utilise modern technologies and digitised modes of creation in my process, before translating this distinctly contemporary visual language into a more classical medium, executing the final artwork using conventional oil on canvas.
- Website
- www.meganjarcher.com
- @megan.j.archer
