I decided in 1993 that I had done enough graphics and dismantled my litho studio and the ancient press that I had been working on for almost 30 years. It was a liberation to be free of the difficult, heavy, restricting and laborious technologies of printmaking.

The transitional pieces are experiments in mixed media that happened while I searched for a way of working that suited me. There was not much order to my exploration. For the first time in my career I entered into the studio without knowing much about what and how I would work except that it would be on a flat surface and not in an edition.

While I was photographing the series, I decided to divide the show into three parts, abstract, representational and a combination of the two. There are thought to be two basic methods of making an abstract, one is based upon process and the other is based upon forethought (abstract expression and post-painterly geometric impressions). There are also two basic approaches to representation: Expression (abstracted representation featuring the ideas and emotions of the artist) and Impression (an attempt to recreate a visual sensation based upon nature). The obvious trick was to set together expression and impression. I called it Expresso-Impressure. Of course, any abstract work that contains any discernable image is a representation and all representation is abstracted by the medium.

At the core of every art are the tools and materials from which it is made and the subject of the piece. The subject is an abstraction. At completion, even if it is abstract, the object (drawing, painting, or print) is real. Except here, on the internet, and within computers where everything is pretty conceptual. I wasn't thinking about digital reproduction for the computer screen then so, unlike academic conceptualism, this show is not exactly part of the art but simply a representation of it. In the traditional realm of art, the real objective world; subject and object occupy two different planes of intellectual experience (you know - like the computer keyboard and screen and case and electrical components are objective and the electric impulses and stuff that appears on the screen are subjective: the difference between medium and message). In retrospect I was attempting to combine object and subject because of the enormous and irreconcilable and heavy and confusing debate in modern art theory which is mote now in the postmodern computer art screen scene. So, basically; I was just fooling around and I am not making much sense trying to rationalize what I did. The simple artist's statement would be: "I did this." But, I was searching for a dynamic balance within the ism forces of modern art which seem to conflict and get beyond modernism and it's limitations. One of the great myths of modernism is the belief that dialectic opposites are irreconcilable and that all art must be utterly original. It seemed like an impossible task to unify modernism because it goes against modern theories but it afforded me a loose theme and a lot of freedom because it was a crazy thing to do.

I need the freedom of semi retirement. I dropped out of the gallery scene because I had done my part towards popularizing art while I was making stuff in editions and keeping the costs down. I wanted to have some fun with more spiritual stuff. I didn't want to reduce all my efforts all my life to boring formulas of economy and business. The prices of pieces in Transitions 3 are higher because I wasn't thinking about economy. A one of a kind painting or drawing requires the same effort and time to make as an entire edition of prints. The limiting mathematical formula I was working under in graphics was:

materials + (wage x time / edition) - commission = wholesale price per print

I want more than I can afford.

Our village marshal, McLuhan, was right: The dialect argument is not large enough to encompass even a two dimensional model. The dialect has two points which constitute a single dimension (the straight line drawn between two points). In order to shape an argument in two dimensions at least a third coordinate point is required. An argument drawn between object and subject has no dimension so it exists in the zone of one dimensional thinking of such arguments as: good vs. evil, order vs. chaos, right vs. wrong, terror vs. joy.

I am free of that now.

Digital art and agile manufacture?

That's another subject so,

: b.smylie

barrysmylie@rogers.com

Write, I'd like to read you.