Urbanize

Abstract

Painter Tira Walsh remembers the introduction to technology in the school’s curriculum in the late 90’s. The intrigue in this manipulative tool for creating hybrid images combined with an engagement in a discussion of contemporary abstract painting, designates the practical arena in which this research project takes place.

This current generation responds to screens, lives are dominated by what we view on mobile phones and laptops. Any device is a necessity. Digital media manipulates and restricts what we see. What is perceived to be normal and right, can be conflicting, manipulative and motivated by greed. Human dignity is distorted and blinded by images of conformity. One ponders on what the future holds for the next generations.

The paintings are descriptions of corruption and manipulation; associations that generate visuals of displacement. The creative process consists in exchanges of contradictory ideas. The work retains the ambiguity of a screen but also synthesizes these strands into complex paintings that operate as representations of a digital and physical urban-scape.