There are times when I do observational drawing and it is especially rewarding drawing from nature. With aerosol work on the other hand I find a lot of the time my work is borrowing from technology. Work in aerosol in a lot of cases is closer to digital art or design rather than natural forms. It is more or less pop art inspired and can become a brand.

The hybridised street art/mural art nature with design is the closest to the natural but mostly is appropriation from images on technology platforms rather than naturalistic observations. For some people the dominance of technology in art is a bad sign. At the same time it is also a sign of the times. Are we collectively going down a bad path?

Even though I observe technological forms and sometimes reference them I don’t feel that it makes my work any better or worse. I mean in an ideal world would we necessarily go back to naturalistic painting and drawing? With all of the messiness of today’s world it makes no difference what I do because I am fundamentally mostly unknown and practise an art form that is associated with rubbish.

Painting in the older Western traditions is still actively performed by a lot of artists to this day. I have met some very high level traditional painters through friends who are so gifted yet basically unknown. They are collected but they are obscure and for one in particular I set up a Linux computer for them and showed them how to connect to the internet in their home on the north shore.

At the same the people who bemoan the state of the art world in its flashy, technology dominated or illustrative child like forms don’t know anything about the actively engaged naturalist painters who are still at the easel painting. It is in one way the constant marketing of new forms and supposedly new/tired ideas that seem to dominate. On the other a collective ignorance of what is in some obscure dusty old home.

The real problem that exists today is that everything is still with us in some shape or form and newer things are constantly evolving, or at least we naively hope they are evolving. Mostly in the way of aerosol art in its current form with its nostalgia, anonymity and notoriety the art world is happy to mostly ignore it because to be a fine art it needs to lose its folk/craft roots and become everything it isn’t.

Some people hope that we can get back to a brutal utopia with a bunch of strong arm authorities who execute the degenerates and create a naturalist world of great art. In a way we are already there because great art is made in a variety of approaches and most of it is ignored. Even the artists making a living from their art are mostly unknown and styles vary greatly. They are successful nobodies in the greater society. The real heroes are making movies and that is technology in every sense of the word.