well, i created these images. they are a group consisting of roughly 60% painted and 40% fully digital artworks, created on and off, casually as it were, for a period of years. initially individual pieces here were not seen as a part of any larger whole, they were simply paintings i happened to do. they began to form as a cohesive body sometime later when i had a minor epiphany about what i'd been doing.

the first few pieces were essentially oddities, works that did not really fit into the style i was working in at the time, namely fully abstract works in the tradition of the abstract expressionists i admired. occasionally one of these more representational pieces would sneak in, punctuating all the abstraction. while living in greenpoint brooklyn i created a piece which put the earlier seemingly odd works in perspective for me, and which dictated the course for the rest of the series.

the piece, here titled ballad, began in a very offhand manner. i'd stretched a piece of cheap polyester from a cut pant leg over a board, which then sat on a table for a number of hours. at some point in the evening i went to the board and began "writing" on it with black ink and a hollow bamboo pen. essentially i scrawled what looked to me like some kind of arabic script. of course i can not write arabic, and in point of fact, was never really exposed to arabic calligraphy in any meaningful or memorable way. this outpouring took me totally off guard. i had no idea why i'd drawn it or what it's import might be.

after building up the piece, working it to further resemble the islamic calligraphy of my totally ignorant imagination, i was quite thrilled at the result. not because it was a thrilling work, but rather because i saw in it a solution to a problem i didn't realize until then i had. essentially, i was tired of abstract painting. i loved it, and love it still, but the act of creating in this vein had actually become quite boring. i found that in my case it had no deeper meaning or implications. it was essentially a mechanical exercise in color and composition. it was then that i realized the works i'd considered oddities were in fact an undercurrent i found more interesting. i decided that creating text forms without meaning was a more intriguing avenue for abstraction than where i had been for the previous years.

my method from then on was to create work which took cues from cultures and eras i knew nothing about. that's not to say i went to the library and studied up, but rather that i'd just combine whatever iconography, color, text, etc that came to mind. it was a kind of celebration of my own ignorance, which i could use, and which would serve as not only a bulwark against plagiarism, but as a method for creating context in a natural, unconscious way. i was making abstract work in the guise of functional or figurative work.

more paintings followed in this way, and eventually, once i decided to put them online, digital works as well. this "archeography" project are some of the fruits of that labour. i've since moved on to new interests, but i remain fond of the ancient, the foreign, and all that work of the past whose meanings and portents are unknown to me because of time, or simply because of my own ignorance of them.

for one thing i thought it would be sensible to display them in a manner which befitted their impetus, namely coming at them from the stance of "not knowing" rather than dryly explaining, but more simply, i thought it would be fun. it was an opportunity to take all i'd done and attempt some kind of rational reading of their content. when the "archeography" project was put up in its first incarnation last year i'd titled the works in the same way i'd created them, random association. now i had the chance to take the work it's in entirety- style, content, iconography, and title- and do a bit of research to see what kinds of frankenstein monsters i'd created. see if any of the dots connected.

the "notes" section below each piece is the result. i simply went online and searched out the relevant words, materials, and contents to see what popped up. i limited myself to six lines of text, or thereabout, so the notes section is quite limited, but i was surprised to find some interesting connections (i'm particularly fond of halcyon, feldspar, and dilemma which seemed to fit the content perfectly somehow). occasionally i offer only a quote, or etymological information, or even concocted origin stories, but taken as a whole i think they are in keeping with the general feeling of the undertaking and in some cases even enrich it.

well, although i don't consider this method of working closed, or indeed this project necessarily finished, i am moving on other things and hope this small group is even fractionally as rewarding for you to take-in as it was for me to create. i encourage anyone with any insight, inference, or idea to comment and anyone with a question to contact me directly. hope you enjoy the "astounding, all new!!!" project.

all the best-

jaime morrison.