and alter your environment? A painting that would demand attention and yet, at the same time induce calm and a space to think, allowing the mind to break free...? His work now starts to become more abstracted.
In 2007, following a serious illness and the publication of his book Suburban Visions , Alan visited the Japanese gardens of Kyoto and the Pacific rim. On his return to London he began work on a new collection of paintings inspired by the philosophy of non-dualism and the meditative sounds of Marconi Union and Loscil.
Alan can best be described as calm, congenial and low key, a seeker of one-to-one interactions who shuns the limelight. When asked to explain his paintings he replied by paraphrasing a Japanese Poem espoused by Alan Watts in his book The Watercourse Way (1976)…
Sitting quietly Doing nothing...
W
hen he was very young and living in his imagination, it was Science, Science Fiction and Maths that informed Alan’s view of the world. While still a teenager, he discovered Taoism, Zen, Surrealism and
Modern Jazz, and set off along his own path to becoming an artist, blending imaginative art and science. Full of energy and always on the move, he was soon producing Oriental artefacts, Tantric Mandalas and book illustrations whilst searching for an underlying pattern in “things”.
By the ‘80’s he was working on sunflower patterns generated on physically huge computers at the Royal College of Art. With Robert Dixon he published a number of articles in Leonardo, New Scientist and Computing & Art. Then, quite uncharacteristically, Alan joined the environmental movement, as editor of the popular magazine Ideas for Tomorrow Today. It was during this time that he began to reflect more deeply on the metaphysical and concrete relationship between order and randomness, and started experimenting with ‘controlled accidents’ on images that were derived from the precise patterns developed in Mandelbrot’s Fractal Geometry of Nature.
Around this time Alan was listening to Environmental Recordings: sounds from the rainforest, a lagoon, alongside the ambient music of Brian Eno. Ambient music can accommodate many levels of listening attention and can be listened to intently or ignored. How then to create an Ambient painting; a painting that might offer a sense of place and both compliment
28 CHOICE POINT MAGAZINE
www.choicepointmagazine.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78