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Commentary by Mark Wilson

In part two of Le Random Editorials' profile on Mark Wilson, we hear from the artist himself. Read part one, the companion interview with Travess Smalley. In this brief commentary, Wilson narrates art history as he describes his journey from traditional mediums to digital art, exploring technology for creativity's sake. In this generous insight, Wilson reveals the path that led to his visionary computer-generated aesthetic, both bold and sensitive.‍

Commentary by Mark Wilson for Le Random

This ‘n That

Born and raised in Oregon, like many kids, I loved to draw. By the time I started high school, I became fascinated with photography, developing and printing my own pictures. In college, my visual life became focused on painting in an Abstract Expressionist style.
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After college and art school, I was confronted with the question, “What kind of pictures should I make?”

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Pop art, op art, minimalism and hard-edge art had become the successors to Abstract Expressionism. I was trying to find my own path forward. I began making large drawings that looked like some kind of abstract engineering or architectural fantasy. By the mid-seventies, these works became more painterly and appropriated computer and electronic imagery.
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Eureka! In 1980, I bought a small personal computer, a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. I loved it but I had no idea how I could use it to make art. At the same time, I started writing very simple programs. Soon I realized that software procedures were much akin to the visual procedures of artists like Sol LeWitt, Larry Poons and Jackson Pollock.

The ever-present issue of how to display whatever the computer makes was initially solved when I acquired a small letter-sized pen plotter in 1981. The plotter output was precise and high-resolution and not dependent on available low-resolution display technologies. The aesthetics of the ink and paper plotter drawings were similar to my earlier handmade drawings. I called these early computer works Hatchplot because they were a series of randomly placed rectangles formed from a series of hatched parallel lines.
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The work evolved rapidly. It became more painterly. I hit upon a pixel mapping technique where a small section of the colored screen image would be mapped to the plotter paper. These mapped pixels could become a variety of geometric shapes: circles, squares, boxes. Colored inks would correspond to the pixel colors on the display. Soon, I began to explore simple geometric transformations in three dimensions. This led to a kind of quasi-architectural space in the plotter drawings.
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The power of computers and software makes it simple to render surfaces, patterns and textures in three dimensions. 

While much of my work has been involved with two-dimensional imagery, I discovered early on that these flat patterns could be easily transformed using standard computer graphic techniques.
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With grant money from a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, I acquired a larger Tektronix pen plotter. Eventually, IBM lent me a powerful HP 7585 pen plotter to develop an art demo for Cynthia Goodman's Computers and Art exhibition in 1988. The intersection of hardware and computer art-making next led me to using laser printers and laser engraving on acrylic sheets. In the mid-eighties, Iris ink jet printers became available in high-resolution, large formats. The inks were much more permanent than existing ink jet printers. The Iris printers were relatively expensive and tricky to use.
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About 2000, Epson introduced inkjet printers with archival inks that were relatively affordable. These printers were marketed primarily for photographers and graphic arts proofing and reproduction. But they were very simple to adapt to fine arts applications like mine.
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Artists have always been interested in technological tools that offer the possibility of new, better and more distinctive image-making.

Consider the adoption of oil paints in the fifteenth century or photography in the nineteenth century. When I first got involved with computers, I thought that they might produce a unique aesthetic. I think that idea was flawed. Instead, computers have become pervasive in the visual arts. The fine arts community’s initial aversion to computers has been replaced by widespread use of computers. Indeed, the graphic arts and photography have become almost totally computer-based. Some artists, like myself, write their own software and essentially control the whole process of image-making. For other artists, there is a kind of continuum of computer use, from heavy to light.
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Scaling, texturing, and intricacy can be developed and realized using the power of computers and software. Multiple layering adds to the visual complexity. The images engage the viewer at different levels, from very close to far away.  A good deal of abstract modernist painting reduced detail and texture. But I believed that the patterns and textures presented fertile ground for exploration. The extraordinary beauty of a Persian carpet or computer chip represents an opportunity for the abstract artist to explore. Combining random choices of color and composition, the digital process makes it possible to richly realize this potential.
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My work attempts to directly use the digital nature of computing machinery.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine creating these works with any other medium. Rather than trying to disguise pixels, they have become the central element of my art making. My hope is that this technique will reveal a new visual geometry that would not have been possible before computers. Hopefully, this work is an original union of hardware and software, all within the context of abstract art.



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Mark Wilson is an artist whose work integrates hardware and software, exploring geometric forms and digital manipulation techniques within the realm of abstract art.