Spiked Flower

I first started working on images like this as ballpoint pen sketches in notebooks while I was on deployment on my submarine in the Navy.

I've since refined the techniques and translated them into Photoshop, where I can work with much more precision and get very good results. Abstract art isn't something I do much of, but these turned out to be very interesting in their orderliness and the way that they suggest symmetrical real world objects.

These pentagonally symmetrical images, made of repeated shapes, are also expressive to me of what a submarine is, a complex of integrated systems comprising a whole. Any one part is relatively meaningless on its own. When the come together, they make something. That's the nature of everything in life. Everything is made of parts that only take on their meaning in the context of their place in relation to other parts.

Each part is also empty of concepts, but these designs, as a whole, hold a gread sadness sometimes for me when I look at them. They were drawn in stressful, sometimes painful, times. They were drawn at times I was exhausted and angry. They were drawn at times when we were running battlestations drills, practicing to launch the nuclear strikes that would be the end of the world.

I see terrible things in these images. But I can't tell you what to see. You'll have to figure that out for yourself.

The original image is pretty huge: 10800 by 10800 pixels. I did it in such large dimensions so that it would be large enough to create a 36x36 inch print at 300 DPI, if anyone would like one. I'd be thrilled to actually sell any.

Other pictures like this:
See [link]