Hello, welcome to my portfolio site! There's a few ways to get around. Over on the right there is a list of pages, so if you like the sound of something, please click on it.
Or else, the easiest way to get around is by "Navigate by Pictures". You can find that at the top of the page.
About My Work
Though I call my work 'illustrations', in fact I like to think of them as 'illuminations'; the word 'illuminations' being a good old fashioned word that harks back to the time of 'illuminated manuscripts'. Think vikings, pillage, death, the Isle of Iona - and monks.
You see, 'illuminations' literally shed light upon stories - whether that story exists in text or purely in the mind of the observer. As such, if you look hard enough, you will find that many of the images here have, not only narratives, but subplots. And quite often those subplots mimic the main premise of the story.
Of course, however you aetomologilise (bet you can't find that word in the dictionary!) an illustration, the images here are slices in time that only ever suggest part of a possible truth. As artists we should never show the whole truth, even if we can - because showing the whole truth negates the observer's participation.
And, as we all know, it's the observer who is the most important part of an image.The observer not only brings their past and present and future to a work, but they are the catalyst who breathes life into the lungs of an image.
Artists are merely mediums - regardless of our mystical aspirations, regardless of what we might claim, . We are craftsman who, with pen or brush or wacom, pluck ideas from the ether and, if we are lucky, pin them down on our 'canvases'.
When it all boils down it, without an observer an artist's work doesn't exist.Without an observer our images are nada, zilch, nix and naught but ethereal compost.
To put it another way, does a painting hanging in your living room make any noise when you are out at a restaurant?
Answer: 'No'.
So thank you for coming to "observe" my work. And if you see something here that is dark and disturbing and suggests that something is not quite right with the world, remember that it is all in the mind of the observer.
On the other hand, if you find an image that makes you feel full of the joy and dance and vigor of life, then that is entirely my doing ...... :)
I made this site because I have one finished illustrated novel I am sending out to publishers. And I have three or four more on the hard drive, wailing and screaming like children waiting to be born and free of their umbilical chords.
Kids should be seen and not heard, aye? And I'm trying my best to make it that way....
regards and thanks again!
Andrew Finnie
