Artist Spotlight
TJ Silverlake
TJ Silverlake creates virtual landscapes produced by generating CGI environments including natural elements — water, land, lighting and atmosphere. At times the artist introduces nearly recognizable objects and figures cast into these landscapes, immersing the viewer in environments that waver between the familiar and the otherworldly. We spoke with the artist about his creative process, his work for Depict, and bring you a virtual journey through his Fictional Landscapes.
Moving Art spotlights artists that push the limits of modern image making techniques to produce stunning, ultra high-definition images. We partner with leading arts organizations to bring greater awareness to these creators, while highlighting work well suited to being experienced on Depict Frame, a dedicated display for 4K digital and moving art.
First steps into digital
The first time I picked up a can of paint spray, I was taken with the subtle effects that I was inadvertently creating on the newspapers spread out below the object I was finishing. It was an easy leap from this point to using an airbrush on Arches fine paper to create images where the sprayed shadows, the residue of image after removing objects placed on the paper, became complex and interesting artifacts of the process.
Fresh out of CalArts graduate school I spent several years earning a living as a hardscape designer. I designed everything from peaceful patio gardens to rolling multi-tiered waterscapes with natural rock slides and underwater tunnels. Many of the rock features were sculpted from rebar and gunite by a crew of craftsmen and finished (painted) by me to mimic granite and other rock surfaces.
As a designer I moved early into CAD systems that enabled me to replace the repetitive aspects of plan creation — drawing a brick deck in a herringbone pattern for instance — with simple brick fill clicks. And with the time saved I explored 3D systems like Maya, Strata, Vue, and Terragen. Terragen and Vue have become my mainstays and I do a majority of work in them, though I occasionally work with other systems to complement and provoke different paths.
Fictional Landscapes
My area of exploration in Fictional Landscapes was never one thing so much as an opportunity to dovetail much of my real world experience into a fabricated world of hyperreal elements. The title Fictional Landscapes came from my early experience when, on outputting these works on paper, people often asked me where I had taken the photos though they originate from no place. I choose the term “fictional” for its implied narrative. I think that small distinction enables the work to engage the viewer in a broader experience.
When I work I am conscious of the viewer. The scale, detail, tone, colors and visual cues are designed to engage the viewer in a journey. I am truly not interested in a specific message (or destination) so much as being able to provide a diverting break as the viewer explores and moves from one visual element to another. The viewer’s journey may take only a few moments or grow over several exposures but, ultimately, I am hopeful the viewer may see the slender thread I am providing between each work that allows a larger narrative to be explored.
I want to engage, to provide a journey into unexplored territory, and exercise the viewer’s conceptual muscles to the extent that I can.
I’m interested in allowing this world to be explored by the viewer while leaving them as few breadcrumbs as possible. The art viewing audience today functions at a very high level. Contemporary art can be very quick and easy to read and I love art like that — I just don’t create it myself. I want to engage, to provide a journey into unexplored territory, and exercise the viewer’s conceptual muscles to the extent that I can. All in all though the viewer needs to do the heavy lifting.
Lost Swimmer
Quiet, cold, long strokes at first
Strong and easy limbs
Seeing no shore
Salt and thirsty moving forward
Quiet shore
Gulls loud on the damp sand
Walking through them to the edge
Graceful, now cold, still seeing no shore
Gliding just below the surface
Long stretches counting cadence
Lost swimmer
My landscapes are stark and truly depend on the viewer for the human element. It’s this relationship that interests me. With Lost Swimmer, I’m isolating the human form and beginning a small investigation into loneliness, which is not so much about being without human contact as about being on our own.
Although I no longer use paint I consider myself to be a painter. Although I would not describe myself as a conceptual artist (who would willingly do that) my work requires substantial thought and perhaps conceptual engagement to be enjoyed. As far as the world described in Lost Swimmer and Fictional Landscapes, they are one of the same — Lost Swimmer exists as a subset of Fictional Landscapes and the lost swimmer being the stand-in for viewer or myself.
My goal has always been to make my work exist as flat objects — as paintings. It’s very important that these works, although created in a virtual three-dimensional space, ultimately exist on a wall in the real world. Anything less than that, whether on a laptop screen, tablet, smartphone or a book will diminish the work. Scale and resolution are critically important to me. What excites me most about current technology is the possibility of displaying my work to a wider audience without compromise — whether that output is ink or pixels.
TJ Silverlake is a digital artist based out of Valencia, California, working primarily in the mediums of digital prints depicting fictional landscapes meditating on fabricated worlds reflecting our own.
Collect a selection of digital limited editions from TJ Silverlake’s Fictional Landscapes series on Depict here.
Depict is the maker of Frame, a stunning experience for full-fidelity, 4K digital and moving art. Reserve now and be the first to own this when they begin shipping in Fall 2015.
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