A few of my favorite futurists
Michelle Hinebrook's paint flickers about on the canvas. The dizzying complexity of her prismatic paintings recalls the ebullient geometry of Islamic tile work. Based in part on her studies of the physical properties of light passing through crystals, these works also shuttle between the digital realm and the real world. She starts with digitally rendered compositions, and then uses airbrushes and paintbrushes to translate them into that most traditional of techniques, painting. This impulse, shared by Matthew Penkala, has been referred to as "The New Aesthetic." We call it "Digital as Manual," or artworks that employ the visual appearance or processes of digital technology in manually-created works of art. Call it what you will, this interest in light, movement and technology was at the heart of the early 20th century Futurist movement. Now, a hundred years later, we can still revel in the exciting tension between painterly gesture and machine-like precision.