Artist in Focus - Getting to know Chuck Elliott

This week our Artist in Focus is Chuck Elliott, a digital artist who creates mesmerising pieces using symmetrical geometry and non repeating patterns. With work shown in over 75 exhibitions and featured in magazines and promotions across the globe, Chuck talks to us about his inspirations and how he started out....

I've been working as a digital artist full time since 1992, after graduating from the old Hornsey School of Art in London. It continues to be an interesting journey. About twelve years ago I decided to focus in on the idea of using digital drawing tools to create studies that explore line, light, colour and geometry. Often liquid geometry. It seemed that the digital toolset offered an opportunity to advance the modernist study of geometric form into new, more complex, more intriguing areas than had previously been possible with pen and paint. Following the example of contemporary music production, digital data can be honed, remixed, layered, edited and sculpted, finessing final compositions in ways that are clearly analogous with modern film, music and photography production. Pure logical progression.

I'm drawing from nature, from maths, from architecture and from life. The drawings are figured by the rhythms and beauty of number systems, and explore the basic building blocks of everything we see around us, line, light, volume and colour. In that sense they get right to the heart of the most basic components of our lived experience. Studies are concerned with overlaying patterns of numbers, exploring how those patterns can create form, glazing with colours and using light to bring the underlying studies to life as single moments in time, on photographic paper.

The works I generate are large format C type photographic prints. Original digital drawings exposed onto photographic paper by laser light, developed, fixed and washed in the traditional manner. These C type prints are then bonded to clear perspex using the Diasec process. The glazed pieces can then be laser cut to shape, framed, or simply mounted directly to the wall. Alongside this main body of work I'm also exploring digital screen art, and 3d printing, which offer intriguing opportunities to add time, motion and sculptural form to the drawings. As computer systems become faster and more powerful, so the opportunity to work with denser, more complex data sets increases, and as such it seems likely that the studies will become ever more intriguing over the coming years….

Each week we will take a look at one of our resident artists with our Artist in Focus blog, we will also share more about their work and insight into the artists on our social media. Sign up to our newsletter to get our Artist in Focus Blog delivered to your inbox every 2 weeks.