A is for Axon

This is a preliminary version of a work called “A is for Axon,” which is part of a series on “The Knowledge” – the famously hard exam that London taxi drivers have to pass to get their license.

Studying for The Knowledge significantly changes your brain.

I’d like to generate a very large version of this, so if you happen to want such a thing, do reach out!

Through a Looking Glass, Darkly (2023)

8” x 10” Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $115

Our idea of past people is obscured by the stories told of them, but a little shows through.

Based on “Pomona”, a photograph of Alice Liddell at 20 by Julia Margaret Cameron, with word-shapes from “Through the Looking Glass” by Lewis Carroll

Narcissus’ Last Tear (2023)

10” x 8” Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $115

Echo fell in love with Narcissus.

Alas, Narcissus fell for his reflection in a pond. Couldn’t tear his eyes away from it. Couldn’t eat, drink, or sleep.

He perished crying because such a beautiful creature would no longer be in the world and was changed, at the moment of his death, to a small golden flower (out of frame).

Or so the myth has it.

The Mirror Crack’d I (2023)

20” x 12” Digitally Generated Image

Limited Canvas Edition of 5 $250

Our reality changes when the mirror cracks.

This was produced by reflecting Waterhouse’s “The Lady of Shallot” through a randomly-generated crack from side to side, extracting a detail from the result.

Based on The Lady of Shallot (1888) by John William Waterhouse and inspired by “The Lady of Shallot” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Mirror Crack’d II (2023)

10” x 8” Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $115

I hadn’t read the Tennyson poem when I started work on this show - I only had an impression of it from ‘Anne of Green Gables’. I knew there was death, of course, but it’s darker than I had realized.

Based on The Lady of Shallot (1888) by John William Waterhouse and inspired by the poem,“The Lady of Shallot,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

City of Light (2023)

10" x 8" Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $115

Inspired by the ubiquitous ironwork window railings of Paris, with a nod to the Catholic culture of its secular society, this image emerged from the idea of Euler spirals reflected in an Euler spiral.

An Euler spiral’s curvature changes in proportion to the distance along the curve. It converges on a point but never gets there. As a mathematician by training and a pedant by inclination, I have to admit the Euler spirals here are limited and approximate.

Gap (2023)

18.75” x 26.5” Digitally Generated Image

Limited Edition of 5 $ 125

In September 2023, I walked across England following the Hadrian’s Wall Path. The most photographed view along that walk was the tree at Sycamore Gap.

I say “was”. On September 27, 2023, during a storm, the tree was felled with a chain-saw.

The colours of the stones in this image were extracted from snapshots I took on that walk.

Sense of Place series

1577 (2023)

12” x 32” Digitally Generated Image

Limited Canvas Edition of 5 $235

1577 commemorates the Great Comet of 1577.

I created this piece by placing pixels according to the text of a biographical article on Tycho Brahe. Brahe’s observations of this comet contributed to Johannes Kepler’s discovery that planets move in ellipses, not circles (which was a big deal).

Pimpernel

This is a test of a technique I am calling “Story Arc”. The form of this piece is based on the Scarlet Pimpernel

Unintended Consequence (2021)

8” x 10” Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $115

What we see in the mirror is constructed of what we see around us.
Based on a selection of 26 stills and publicity portraits of Golden Age film actors

And So On (2020)

26.5” x 18.75” Digitally Generated Image

Unique Giclée

Part of the “Lay it on the Line” group show focusing on consumerism, this piece is based on the 1980’s Fabregé ad: “And they told two friends, and so on…”

I started it with the idea of spheres connected with wired, but when this image emerged, it spoke to my feelings re the clutter advertising engenders in your life and in your head.

Hedge (2020)

26.5” x 18.75” Digitally Generated Image

Unique Giclée

Part of the 2020 show “Lay it on the Line”, which focused on consumerism.

What do you see?

I leave the interpretation of any metaphors to you, dear viewer.

Vanity Fair (2020)

26.5” x 18.75” Digitally Generated Image

Unique Giclée

Part of the “Lay it on the Line” group show focusing on consumerism…"

The term “Vanity Fair” originated from the continual marketplace of ostentation and frivolity in “Pilgrim’s Progress.”
This piece uses shapes representing all the words in the Thackery novel and all the unblended colours of Crayola(TM) crayons, the first brand I remember being aware of.

Childhood innocence meets perpetual indulgence. What could go wrong?

Determination II (2020)

14" x 11" Digitally Generated Image

Limited Canvas Edition of 5 $ 160

This is a smaller reworking of a piece I did for the “Grit and Glide” exhibition in 2020.

No matter what you may think of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s judicial stances, she was an exemplar of the virtue of Grit.

I used shapes derived from the words of Ginsburg’s opinions: United States v. Virginia: and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, arranged with a random element, to mimic Ginsberg’s trademark collars.

Feb 30, 1712 (2020)

16" x 20" Digitally Generated Image
Limited Metal Edition of 5 $225

It was a real thing.

Sweden made an early attempt at gradually switching over to the Gregorian calendar by eliminating leap years for awhile. They skipped the first one, but with wars and such, they neglected to skip the next couple of leap years. Eventually they decided to return to the Julian calendar, by adding a day in 1712.

This piece was constructed from 1 straight line for every day from Feb 30, 1712 to Jan 1, 2021.

Pronation (2020)

20" x 16" Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $225

In mid-2020 I embarked on a series of works based on words randomly selected from the Oxford English Dictionary. This is the first in that series:

Using the repeated children’s prayer “Now I lay me down to sleep,” to govern the length of each line segment, Pronation suggests the process of falling over at the end of a long day.

Random Words series.

Rearrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (2020)

8" x 8" Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $110

Based on John McNeil Whistler’s “Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1”, aka “Whistler’s Mother.”

Rise and Fall (2020)

2 11" x 14" Digitally Created images

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $255

Rise and Fall were made by first connecting a constrained-random point to all the corners of the image with a thick ‘stem’, then repeatedly picking random points in the image to connect to the nearest not-background point, with some secret sauce for choosing the colour of the lines.

My tendency to see familiar things in abstract patterns both mystifies and delights me.

Numerous (2020)

16" x 20" Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $225

This is the second in my series based on random words from the Oxford English Dictionary

The word “numerous” put me in mind of great herds of sheep. Sheep follow a kind of alpha-sheep known as bellwethers. I based this image on the idea of masses following leaders. That it ended up looking like crewel work (needlework done with yarn, often wool) was a bonus.

There are 11279 “sheep” in the piece.

Random Words series.

Twister (2020)

16" x 20" Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $225

It is said that L. Frank Baum deliberately set out to create an American fairy tale with his books about the fabulous land of Oz. He succeeded - if not directly, then through the adaptations of his work, especially the 1939 movie, “The Wizard of Oz.”

The colours in this piece come from that film, and the shapes from the first of Baum’s Oz books: “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”.

I have provided a “deep dive” into the making of this image for the insatiably curious at clfisher.com/exhibits/random_encounters

Dinner (2019)

8" x 10" Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $115

I chose the titles for the “Assorted Actresses” pieces first, before generating them, based on some fact I knew, some movie or particular scene the actress had been in. So I quite enjoyed the interplay between the title of this piece and the bloodiness of the resulting image.

Assorted Actresses series. Based on a portrait of Jean Harlow.

Ananke (2020)

16" x 20" Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $225

Necessity.

Compulsion.

Inevitability.

These are the province of the goddess Ananke.

This piece marries colours from the Notre Dame fire of 2019 with shapes corresponding to the letters in an English translation of Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Canute (2020)

26.5." x 18.75" Digitally Generated Image

Unique Edition Giclée $295

This piece was originally produced for the “Grit and Glide” exhibition in 2020.

Once upon a time, or so the stories go, Cnut the Great set his throne by the sea and commanded the incoming tide to halt, deliberately demonstrating the limits of his power.

The forces of nature care little for we puny humans.

Based on a news photograph of the “Gimli Glider”.

Finnish Line (2019)

26.5” x 18.75” Digitally Generated Image

Unique Edition Giclèe $295

In 2019 I spent 4 months in Finland, There, I photographed nearly everything I threw out. Then, I extracted the number of pixels of each colour in the collection of photos as the basis of a new image.

For the line element I turned to the Consumer Price Index from 2015 to 2019. Then I applied a modified sort algorithm to the pixels on each side of it.

The result? One viewer called it “scary desert things will fall on me.” Your mileage may vary.

Dimensions (2020)

16" x 20" Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $225

Pondering abstraction, representation, and reality and how we decide if an image is representational or abstract — and, if it is representational, what the thing it represents is (a portal to another dimension?, a simple cubic solid?), and whether that is “real”.

“Ceci nest pas une boîte”,

Based on a photograph of a dear friend with a space bra on her head. Because nebulae are pretty.

Charade (2019)

8" x 10" Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $115

Charade: an absurd pretense intended to create a pleasant or respectable appearance

Assorted Actresses series. Based on a photograph of Audrey Hepburn

Flaunt (2019)

8" x 10" Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $115

My personal favourite in the “Assorted Actresses” series, this reminds me both of a speeding runner and the twirl of a magician’s cape.

Assorted Actresses series. Based on a photograph of Mary Pickford.

Kansas (2019)

10" x 8" Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $ 115

“Toto…
I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

This piece captures a little of the overstimulation of arriving by yourself (well, except for your dog) in a place of too many colours and too many people.

Assorted Actresses series. Based on a photograph of Judy Garland.

Want (2019)

8" x 10" Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $114

“I want to be left alone”

Assorted Actresses series. Based on a photograph of Greta Garbo.

Contessa (2019)

8" x 10" Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $115

This piece, based on a publicity shot of Ava Gardner, retains more of the flavour of the original than the other pieces in the series.

The process of creating the pieces was deliberately limited to 4 hours for each image. While this one was running, I had to travel for an hour, and shut my laptop to take it with me. Hence, it had fewer iterations through the process, and ended up in a rawer state.

Jericho (2019)

8" x 10" Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $115

In 2019, I started manipulating the pixels in existing images, developing methods that let me give my process a set of parameters, then walk away for several hours while it sorted the pixels in the underlying image according to my instructions.

This image is based on a portrait of Claudette Colbert. The title refers to the blowing of the trumpet in the last scene of “It Happened One Night” destroying the “Walls of Jericho”.

The first 25 images from my “Assorted Actresses” series formed the basis for a project where people voted on which images they liked best, and then I used that information to generate new images. (see my website for the results)

Eve (2019)

8" x 10" Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $115

Distraction. Flash and subtlety. Motives behind motives.

Assorted Actresses series. Based on a photograph of Barbara Stanwyck.

Mame (2019)

8" x 10" Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $115

“One night she started to shim and shake, That brought on the Frisco Quake. So you can put the blame on Mame boys, Put the blame on Mame.”

This piece refers to a song sung in the film “Gilda”. Once again, some lucky correspondence between the title and the result.

Assorted Actresses series. Based on a photograph of Rita Hayworth.

Goodness (2019)

10" x 8" Digitally Generated Image

Limited Metal Edition of 5 $115

Coat check girl: “Goodness, what beautiful diamonds" Maudie:
“Goodness had nothing to do with it."

Maybe it’s just the suggestion of the title, but I see diamonds.

Assorted Actresses series. Based on an image of Mae West.

Two Helens (2019)

12” x 32” Digitally manipulated drawing

Limited Canvas Edition of 5 $235

“Two Helens” is sourced in Yosuf Karsh’s photographs of Helen Hayes and of Helen Keller. I made charcoal drawings from his images, then divided them into sections and rearranged them by chance.

The fragmentation and recombination of the base images speaks to the unreliability of our mental images of our elders — of the near-truths, misattributions and utter fabrications that make up our stories of our predecessors.