Artist Talk With Ryan Browning

Artist Ryan Browning visited our campus last Wednesday, February 9, 2011.  He presented his artwork from 2006 to 2010 and some of his plans for 2011.  I found it interesting that Dungeons and Dragons as well as the emergence of 3-D graphics in video games had influenced a lot of his artwork. 

In 2006 the first piece of art that he had been truly proud of was a map that he had cut up and pasted back together.  He said he really liked the idea of crossing boundaries or eliminating them completely.  This got him thinking about spaces in proportion to where they belong.

In 2007 a game called EverQuest came out that changed Ryan’s perception of space.  He said he liked the idea of spending time with others in an artificial world.  He also enjoyed the polygonal imagery and the fact that you could make yourself whatever you wanted.  However, he has chosen to use his digital influence in a traditional medium. 

In 2008 Ryan created a polar bear sculpture to explore the interaction between virtual imagery and real space.  At this time he was also exploring the creation of the persistent world.  This is apparent in his painting, “Birth of an Island” which is like a Genesis story.  This is also where Ryan begins using polygonal shapes to represent his main focus in his artwork.

In 2009 he begins to seriously consider character, using his polygonal figures as human surrogates.  The reason why he chooses to use surrogates in place of humans is because he feels that people in pictures are limited.  The main goal here is to get his audience to interact more with his artwork.

As Ryan moved into 2010 he decided to take his artwork a step further and loosened up his geometric images, flattening out space, and the incorporation of motion.  A very interesting piece he did called “Time Machine”, which also happens to be his favorite, includes many non-geometric images in it but they are more of the background to offset the loosely geometrical time machine that has been defaced with graffiti due to the fact that time travel never happened in the future. 

For the coming year Ryan has some interesting new inspirations.  He is now working on incorporating a moody, romantic darkness coupled with gothic cathedral architecture to his artwork.  I cannot wait to see what he decides to do next; his work is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

After the Futurists PowerPoint in class yesterday I noticed some similarities in that they use a lot of geometrical shapes to represent other things just as Ryan does.  I think that this type of abstraction is appealing because it is like looking at the world with different eyes, perhaps even kaleidoscope eyes.  It forces the viewer to look at the world in a way they never had before, allowing them to absorb the beauty of the artist’s depiction of the world through his or her eyes.

Ryan Browning’s artwork relates to mine in that we both have been influence by similar things.  I have been influenced by video games (as well as the bright colors that I see in them).  I too enjoy the old crappy graphics of the original 3-D games.  What I truly take away from his artwork and artistic experience is that I can include character in seemingly inanimate objects.