John Dowling American Graffiti Painting’s
John Dowling’s American Graffiti drawings are made on the computer. The process starts with manually taking photographs of paintings. Then, every square inch is drawn until the original photos become nothing more than the color palettes. The new resulting compositions are now complex drawings. They often encompass over 1,500,000 manual brush strokes and manual mouse and tablet manipulations. The drawings and paintings often have original sizes exceeding 5 feet by 21 feet!
You cannot see the details in the compositions with these thumbnails. Even the full-screen images do not reveal the details. You can click on any of them to make the image full-screen. To see the full details, you must view them in their original form. They are on printed aluminum, metallic canvas, or metallic cotton fiber. Many of these abstractions or micro-abstractions harbor “spacelings” a nickname the artist John Dowling has affectionately given to them. These “spacelings” are like abstract creatures you find when the observer drills in on pieces of these abstractions.
You will also find abstract “totems.” Totem poles are the largest, but not the only, objects used by coastal Pacific Northwest natives. They use them to depict spiritual reverence, family legends, sacred beings, and culturally important animals, people, or historical events. Here John Dowling pays homage to totem art. The influence of traditional totem art can be seen on the vertical axis of many of Dowling’s more complex pieces.
Expressionists used the impasto technique for its expressive traits and to draw attention to a certain aspect of the work. Van Gogh is said to be a pioneer in using the impasto technique. Van Gogh used impasto not just to add dimension to his paintings but to add emotion and movement. We see this movement in the swirling clouds of Wheat Field with Cypresses and Starry Night. The same colors and images could be created with a traditional painting technique. However, the movement and emotion of the painting would be missing. John Dowling makes use of a modified impasto technique in all of his American graffiti collections and pieces. Just look at the swirling graphics.
Balance (Symmetry/Asymmetry) is a principle of design. It involves arranging elements so that individual parts of a composition appear equally important. This arrangement creates an equal distribution of visual weight throughout the format or composition. If a composition appears top or bottom-heavy and/or anchored by weight to one side, it is not visually balanced.
Types of balance:
- Symmetrical balance (or Symmetry) means that the work of art is the same on one side as the other. It is a mirror image of itself on both sides of a center line.
- Asymmetrical balance (or Asymmetry) means that the two halves of the work of art are different. However, they try to create balance. In other words, the sides may not be exactly the same. There will be elements that interact. This interaction makes each side equally important.
- Radial symmetry means the weight of the image or form radiates from a center point.
- KALEIDOSCOPE RADIAL SYMMETRY is a more complex and one that Dowling uses quite a bit of in his symmetrical pieces. Kaleidoscope symmetry behaves as if Radial and Mirror symmetry are on simultaneously.
- Reflective symmetry is two or more images facing each other.
- Rotational Symmetry is also like a kaleidoscope. It is an image rotating around a center point circularly.
Dowling uses all of these types of symmetry and symmetrical balance in these American Graffiti pieces.
