The computer is the ultimate light and image generator, bridging the dreams of such early pioneers as Wallace Rimington, Mary Greenwalt, Moholy Nagy, Thomas Wilfred and Adrian Klein—all forerunners who sought the foundation for an art of light.

Having all but abandoned traditional pigment, dye and ink, I find myself dazzled by a computer digital medium that allows me to paint with electrons streaming from a cathode in rainbows of infinite light--in a space as alive as the atmosphere itself. The affordable computer, with its’ growing body of software tools for the painter, is unprecedented because together they form a light speed synaptic medium which allows one to create, modify, change, store, capture, scan and infinitely model--in real time--on the fly--whatever the mind can imagine. I can think of no medium past or present, which coalesces so many powerful tools within arms reach for the painter. The computer is for me the ultimate light generator bridging the dreams of 19th Century figures like Wallace Rimington, Mary Greenwalt and later in this Century, Moholy Nagy, Thomas Wilford and Adrian Klein, pioneers who sought the foundation for a spiritual art of light.

My paintings draw their inspiration from science, life and humanity all of which appear to be converging toward an unprecedented vision of Gaia global reorganization, cosmic consciousness, spiritual awakening all moving towards the evolutionary rise of a bio-quark-femto supercosm. As an artist I find compelling joy in participating in this unfolding paradigm. I do so through developing the content of my work by staying in touch with evolving reality, computers, appreciation of subconscious mind and through meditation. I view my monitor canvas as a night black atmosphere that anticipates emerging light, setting before me a sense of creation and mystery. My approach is painterly in that I utilize my digital paint software as I would traditional oil pigment that can be molded fluidly and variously with the use of a pressure sensitive pen. Painting with mysterious electronic light I begin by illumining amorphous forms, allowing them to grow into shapes that take on meaning, literal nuances, abstraction and non-objective appearances that appear both familiar and unfamiliar and or strange! I attempt not to preconceive content, symbol and metaphor nor how my paintings will finish, by opening myself at the outset to motifs that draw inspiration from my interest in everything autopoeitic, living and non living, human nature, evolution, physics, biology, science with a particular attraction to astronomy and cosmology. Additionally this blending of form and idea motifs echoes my absorption with human scale, cosmic connectedness, meaning and aesthetics. I find my work generally driven by a Universe appearing incredibly patterned, totally alive, chaotic, complicated, utterly mysterious and hauntingly beautiful—as well as unsettling and disturbing. I attempt in my work to evoke a cosmic reality that is fundamentally poetic, symbiotic, interdependent and touching all of us.

© November 2003, Roger Ferragallo