Watching the fabulous James Mosley give his talk at St. Brides on remaking old types digitally, I picked up on an answer he gave to one of the questions. Paraphrased, it was something along the lines of "whenever you step away from the original, you have an interpretation or version of that original, that will never be an authentic match."
The phrase sprung to mind when I saw Ben Rotman's work listed on Lost at E Minor recently.
Working digitally, Rotman has created images that could on first sight just as easily have been formed on a canvas with a thick palette of oil paint. But look more closely at the relation between the vibrant colours and the textures behind them and you see that quite a lot of manipulation and trickery is at play.
I'm not sure if I like the images yet. I was struck enough by the brilliant colour and composition when I first saw them to want to read more, but Mosley's quote has had me thinking. Does it matter that they're not authentic oil paintings? Is the question more of the digital art of making them seem like oil paintings? If the works are displayed in public how will that effect how they are viewed?
Either way it is quite a considerable skill to be able to work to this level and I salute Ben Rotman for that. It's a shame his website doesn't convey this skill so much.
