Stephen Luecking
Digital Painting -- Geometry and Poetics

The works in this exhibit are small scale giclee prints. I have labelled these as “paintings” since my use of digital tools corresponds directly to methods developed in my early career as a painter. Sculpting had led to expertise in three-dimensional modelling and a position teaching in developing the computer graphics program for DePaul University’s computer science school. It took me fifteen years of teaching in the program to breach the seemingly cold world of computer art. It turned out warmer than I expected.

As with classical paintings these works begin with a geometric layout that provides a skeleton to be fleshed out with color nuances, surface articulations and ambiguous spaces. Their geometry, however, is not classical, but employs geometries developed for computer graphics to portray forms from nature. I might generate hundreds of potential and often surprising layouts before choosing a direction to pursue. Once set off on the path mapped by the geometry the math becomes subsumed into the goal of visual poetics.