Bud and Betty Micheels
student artist-in-residence grant

CYRUS AMUNDSON 1997-98

Art and technology are interrelated in that art is influenced if not dependent on the technical capabilities at hand. Painting is more accessible with the advent of oil paint that allows canvases to be rolled and transported. Impressionism follows tubed paint because for the first time the painter is not confined to the studio. With the appearance of technologies like the camera and the computer the artist has a vocabulary nonexistent before these tools were available. What is more interesting to me than this causal relationship between technology and art however is how both act to define the human condition. Art and technology set parameters for technical and intellectual space at any given time in history, in this way they establish a paradigm for our existence. This brings up more points revolving around the idea of space and location, how and where we locate ourselves, not only in three dimensions but in time and all the expanses we cannot measure. These images address space, time, and location in a manner appropriate and in reference to the medium. That is, painting is concerned with these issues of time and space in a nature unique to the discipline and a direct translation cannot be made from the language of paint into another study or even verbal description.

Untitled oil on canvas