Squaring the Circle

When it comes to digital imaging, I tend to have intermittent but intense bouts of productivity. These usually develop from some simple seed of an idea that somehow takes, germinates, and proliferates into a series of variations, which often seems to involve recycling elements of old work into new configurations. There's something analogous to evolutionary "pathways" about the way it works, and I imagine this is how most creative types who aren't working to commission get new things made. You feel a push or a pull in a certain direction, and just see where it takes you; sometimes nowhere, of course, but the ride is always fun.

In one of these bursts of activity over the last few days I have made about thirty new images – quite a few of them in several satisfactory alternative "states", so more like eighty – all stemming from the simple observation that the background of much of my digital work often has as much standalone visual interest as whatever figurative or decorative business I might have plonked down in front of it. So I started going back over old work, stripping out foreground detail and laying bare and re-emphasising the underlying colours, shapes, and patterns. In effect, I was de-cluttering; if only I could bring the same impulse to bear on our house...

It is very satisfying, and I can sense a new "pathway" forming. Inevitably, after a while this speculative, minimalist approach morphed into something less exploratory and more focussed, and I have had to resist the temptation to re-clutter. What seems to be emerging is a series mostly linked by the simple visual appeal of combining a square and a circle, one enclosing the other: "squaring the circle" and "circling the square", so to speak. Whether this is going to go somewhere or nowhere remains to be seen, but constructive fun is being had, and in the end what more can you ask?