Extinct Instinct

About

Underdog Gallery comments: “I met Josie through a mutual friend who introduced us.
When I first saw Josie’s work I could tell she had talent and a good technical ability but needed a little guidance to help her express her true potential and explore and find her own style and direction. We had a chat and I gave her good constructive criticism, which she took on board with maturity and an appreciation that it was for her benefit to listen and progress her art.

Josie is one of the most dedicated artists I have had the pleasure to work with from the start of her career. At only 23 years old she has her whole career ahead of her and I honestly think her art work is as accomplished as a lot of professional artists twice her age. Just think where she could be in that time! She has listened to advice, taken inspiration from other artists I have introduced her to and created her style and direction over the last two years of work and studies.

I honestly think Josie is a talented young painter/artist to watch out for in the coming years and her new work is of a standard that would not look out of place in any prestigious art collection. She is surprising me at every turn with new techniques ideas and art pieces that I never expected after this short period and I'm very proud to be representing her here at The Underdog Gallery.

Sammy Forway
Director

The human race is advancing a digital brain quicker than our own in order to inspire and control.

The way we perceive the modern world is through a calibration between our brains and the digitally omniscient world.

We have access to an unlimited amount of knowledge at every moment, only if you have your ‘smart’ phone. It panics you to leave it behind, because with it, it makes you safer, clever and sometimes even superior. So what does all this genius do when we no longer have to search, sacrifice, learn and research into anything that sparks an idea or interest. Instead it happens in seconds.

Technology has become a familiar part or our hands, almost an extension of our bodies. What do you do when love, happiness, fear and pain is an instant button to this complex world.

For the younger generations how is someone meant to learn about passion and resilience when it is more natural to navigate through computer codes than to learn manners and respect? There are fleeting glimpses of the truth and more importantly illusions through the world that we so easily access, how do you differentiate the two? This is what I have tried to capture in my own work.
In order to come up with these naturally digital designs I began by looking at everyday objects through the eyes of an Ipad. Enhancing and changing the images in an almost kaleidoscope effect the subject remains the same with small clues as to what the objects actually are by using familiar lines and shapes that our minds have become accustom to. The human input is expressed with the paint, making the symmetrical unsymmetrical and using random strokes and splats to show the beauty of irregularity that is possessed in human nature, a reaction of our own individual instincts that used to determine the paths we led, now there is to many roads and temptations our instincts can be easily over shadowed. There are anomalies throughout the exhibition, which have been placed as a reminder to how far we have come, to show the drastic contrast to the life before the Internet, smart phones and instantaneous knowledge.

So are we free or trapped by this open door to a digitally omniscient world, when the news we’re fed, pictures we see and knowledge we hear have been distorted in some way or another to inspire or control?

What is more dangerous?