[Sharon Passmore]

This artist is fantastic. Where does digital manipulation end and painting begin?

Matt Mahurin:
http://www.mattmahurin.com/#/illustrations/

[Ann Drysdale]

I am stunned. Now I need to tell myself why.

From the point of view of someone who is, as you will have guessed, ill-at-ease with the location of the bar you mention, this has touched, moved, sickened, delighted me. A challenge - have at it!

Thank you, Sharon.

[ross hamilton hill]

Why should there be an end or a beginning, the means of production are not the point, it is the product that matters, does it turn you on, or in the professional artist's case, do you want to buy it?

[Sharon Passmore]

It's the skill and polish that blows me away. These are a bit gruesome for my taste. I wouldn't hang some of them in my home, but these are his "Illustrations" gallery, so they must have been commissions and gruesome is popular these days. BUT the skill! Amazing! "Living forever" just blows me away. I aspire to create work this finished, this believable. Speaking of "Living forever", which side is the least manipulated photo? Is it two people? Is one side completely manipulated? If so, wow! I'm touched, moved, sickened and delighted too.

[Ann Drysdale]

This work put me in mind of a favourite painter - Michael Sowa.

Here's a YouTube presentation, in the matter of Ross's Alice Paintings

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVlE6WWqIP0ou-tube

He is prolific; I don't like it all, but the one with the dog and the cat looking through their different windows put me so much in mind of Vermeer's Little Street in Delft that I laughed aloud.

I once bought a picture of a rabbit (by Aviva Halter) from a gallery because I walked into the room and laughed with delight when I saw how the painter had made her rabbit live in the same way as Dürer had made his baby hare - she had even worked her initials into a monogram. The gallery owner said he knew what the artist had done and I was the first to see her joke. She paints dog-portraits now and her work is not much to my taste, but her original rabbit is on my wall as I type (look up and left) along with a charcoal sketch of a whippet by Simon Packard and a hare running through dandelions by Rebecca Polyblank.

By the way, I name the artists not as a way of "dropping" them, but because I think they should be linked to their work and so that people can look them up and see more. As Sharon did with Mahurin.

[W.F. Lantry]

Not my cup of tea. Sorry. As for the border line, I thought we got past that one with Vermeer? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0pxP8PUIKU

[Ann Drysdale]

Obviously not - "This video is not available in your country - sorry."

Bugger these borders...!

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Ann Drysdale

Obviously not - "This video is not available in your country - sorry."

Bugger these borders...!

Darned copyright laws! Curses!

Well, maybe this is a better source anyway: http://www.vanityfair.com/unchanged/...mirrors-lenses

[Sharon Passmore]

Ok, well this is the whole point isn't it? If Vermeer used technology, was he not an artist? Ridiculous! Some folks are of the opinion that photography and digital work are not art because of the technology; as if the computer could produce work like Matt Mahurin's just by being switched on; as if a camera can see and frame things in the viewfinder, adjust it's own aperture, decide it's own depth of field, choose it's own film speed. Do we question a poet's validity because he uses a thesaurus or (gasp) a rhyming dictionary?

A camera or a computer can only obey. They are tools. Art and technology have been hand-in-hand for centuries, maybe even millennia. This is because artists are the ones who smash disparate thoughts together and make "A" and 2 = tree-frogs. Picasso becomes a film buff and we get women with 3 boobs. Artists are the ones who see the possibilities in any new technology. Artists and scientists are cousins.

[Janice D. Soderling]

OMG, these are WONDERFUL. I haven't seen any art so mind-blowing since I discovered Odd Nerdrum.

But these take it to another level.

I would hang them in my home most certainly. But I have some pretty weird paintings already. Or so my children and friends tell me.

I could never afford these, but I'd happily buy an art book with his work.

Sharon, how exciting that you have given the Art forum a shot in the arm. Thanks.

Now I have to check out these other suggestions.

Added in: Ann, thanks for posting the Michael Sowa video. Wonderful. I did not know his work.

Bill thanks for trying but the second one was also unviewable. It seems to be intentionally garbled.