Ted Johnson

My name is Ted Johnson, and I’m an artist working entirely as a digital painter.

Over the years I’ve been a sculptor, printer, woodworker, potter, and of course, I’ve drawn and painted all along. Digital is new to me having only worked with it over the past ten years. It’s been a real steep learning curve for sure! The possibilities with digital are far greater  than with traditional brush, paint, and canvas, although, in truth, I’ve only stayed with what would be normally viewed as traditional techniques.

It’s possible to use the painting software to work in a very limited traditional technique of course, but it would be a shame to do that as it would be neglecting the vast potential available with  the tools. There’s more about this on the next page.

Digital paintings are considered to be “Original Inkjet Paintings” by museums and galleries. They recognize that this is a new direction in the production of original art work but have been struggling as how to define it. This was the name they seem to have settled on.

In the past, the artist produced a single painting in whatever material was being used and more were impossible, unless a completely new painting was begun. But of course, that would not be a copy, it would be another original. In recent years various printing methods have been devised to make credible copies of the original so that larger numbers of people could own the artwork, and at a much lower price that an original would mandate. Millions of copies can be produced, each being similar to all others, however, these are not originals, but copies of one single original.

Digital paintings also are printed using the same tools but there is one very major difference. As the original lives as computer binary code, it doesn’t exist outside of the code until it is printed. At that point it is an original. The advantage is that any number can be printed, without degradation by the print process, and each is an original. This seems to be hard to comprehend for many people. The painting has value when it is signed and dated by the paintings creator. The painting itself may be signed and dated, on it’s surface, but true value is added by the artist actually signing the work with his/her own hand. This has always been the case with any art done throughout the past.

We’re at the beginning now with this new tool being used by artists. The public is very unsure as well as uneducated about this and confusion reigns. The usual response by the buying public as well as by conservative artists is to automatically reject anything new and stick with what they know. This is a shame as digital methods and tools offer an artist extraordinary power in the creative process. The work of the future will be much enhanced and follow many new directions impossible entirely, or only with great difficulty in the past.

What matters isn’t the method used to create, but the end product.  Look at the work on it’s own merits and don’t worry about how the artist produced it. Its only the painting itself that matters, not technique.

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