artist spotlight: pixo

For the month of April, 2009, the artist spotlight goes to Pixo. I have been following Pixo's work for as long as I can remember. Pixo's art is both simple and complex, playful yet carefully thought out. Most of all, the work is always engaging. And now, with great pleasure, I present only a small fragment of the art of Pixo. Enjoy!



1. Q: Your drawings are like tiny visual playgrounds - I can look at them forever. What first got you interested in abstract work?

A: It was a life drawing class. I was getting a bit bored and decided to do something different. Instead of drawing the model in front of me, I started to fill the empty space around the figure with something that looked like floating concrete blocks. My art teacher asked what I was doing. I cannot remember my exact response; I think I said something about exploring space. He quickly came to the conclusion that I had no clue, and I was venturing into something that I was not ready for. He asked me to stay behind after class.

He gave me a blank piece of paper and asked me to fill it with lines. Not certain what he was expecting, I laid down half a dozen vertical lines of similar length and spaced them out equally across the paper. Next, he gave me another piece of paper, and said: “Draw these lines again, but this time, make the space more interesting”. I stood there for a while, staring at the paper, trying to understand what he meant by "more interesting". After some more waiting, seeing no action, he pointed at a spot on the paper and told me to put a line there. Next, he said: “Take a look now, where should the next line be”. After some more waiting, still no clue, and no action, he pointed at another spot, and I put down the second line. He said: “Look again, observe how the space is being divided. Uniform spacing in the first drawing is not very interesting. With this one, there are now some variations. Let's draw the next line with a slight tilt. ... Let's draw the next line to be shorter.... Let's give the next one a little curve. ...”. That was my introduction to Abstract Art. That was 25 years ago.



2. Q: I'm intrigued by your choice to remain anonymous with regards to your art. Can you elaborate on such a choice?

A: I believe knowing my real name add nothing to the art I made. If some aspects of who-I-am can help viewers understand what-I-do, I am open to share the information. But associating the information to my name does not seem necessary.

Turning that thinking around, the question becomes – will knowing my art add value to my real name. This perhaps could happen if my drawings ever become popular. However I would still rather not have the drawings linked to my name as I would prefer the drawings to stay free. For free, I mean free from ownership of any sort, and free for all to enjoy and to use for whatever purpose with no strings attached.



3. Q: When I first saw your art, I was surprised to find your work mostly in a digital format, even though it appears very intuitive and organic. What are some of your favorite art-making tools and why?

A: I use tools that can efficiently place solid black lines into blank white space, and allow the outcome to be digitized for online sharing. My earliest drawings were done with Pilot Sign Pen in 5x7 sketch book. I love the smooth and consistent lines that flow from these pens. The resulting marks are crisp and scan really well. With roller ball pens and letter size printing papers readily available at work, I started to draw with them as well. Because the scanning and the post-processing of images are manual and quite time consuming, after a while, I started to also just draw directly with the computer. I use Corel Painter with a 4x5 inch Wacom tablet. Digital drawing is great because the speed of laying down lines can be very swift, and I can undo lines that I do not like and try again.



4. Q: I like your view of drawing as sculpting of pictorial space and assembly of visual parts. How did you develop such an approach to your work?

A: My idea about pictorial space was picked up from my art teacher, quite gradually, over 3 years of weekly life drawing classes. Those were amazing times. It was through the work of Picasso and Klee later on that I fully see how this idea had been put into practice.

For my approach to drawings as assembly of visuals parts, I can think of three aspects of who-I-am that have led me to it.

1) Being Chinese, I grew up writing Chinese and getting exposed to traditional Chinese painting. I learnt how Chinese characters are constructed from parts (link: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Index:Chinese_radical), and observed how traditional Chinese paintings are composed from common pictorial elements (link: http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchresult.cfm?parent_id=744245).

2) Having studied computer science and working in the field of information technology, I have learnt to design information systems from technical components and to depict them through schematic diagrams (link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Modeling_Language).

3) Being a Buddhist, I have accepted the idea of “dependent-arising” being the way that all things come into being. To borrow an explanation in Wikipedia, “dependent-arising” is the understanding that any phenomenon exists only because of the existence of other phenomena in an incredibly complex web of cause and effect covering time past, time present and time future. (Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prat%C4%ABtyasamutp%C4%81da ).



5. Q: Can you tell me more about how you relate drawing to the Buddhist concept of emptiness?

A: I should start by explaining the meaning of emptiness. The Buddhist concept of emptiness does not mean “nothingness”. When something is said to be empty, it does not mean that something does not exist. It simply means that it is “devoid of inherent existence”. Let’s use oil paint to illustrate this idea. The ingredients of oil paint are linseed oil, beeswax and colour pigments. If you ask what exists inherently in oil paint that makes it oil paint, you will not find it in the linseed oil, the beeswax or the colour pigments that made the paint. This is because if there were inherent existence of oil paint nature in these separate ingredients, we should not be able to use colour pigments to make acrylic paint (as oil and water do not mix), and it should not be possible to use beeswax as molding material (as oil paint will not melt after it hardens). Hence, a reasonable conclusion is that there is no inherent oilpaintness in the separate ingredients. With no inherent oilpaintness in its separate ingredients, another reasonable conclusion is that there is no inherent oilpaintness in oil paint itself. However, when the correct portions of these ingredients are mixed together using the correct method, they will result in oil paint. So, a Buddhist will say, oil paint does exist, but it is devoid of inherent existence. In short, oil paint is said to be empty. The Buddha saw this nature of emptiness in all phenomena.



My personal goal is to explore and experience emptiness through drawing. In the celebrated Heart Sutra, there is a very popular phrase: "form is emptiness; emptiness is form". My corresponding statement for that is: “I pursue drawing from emptiness to study the emptiness of drawing”.

“Pursue drawing from emptiness” is in response to the Sutra’s “emptiness is form”. The idea is, through understanding the nature of emptiness, I shall be equipped to create forms of all kinds.



With “form is emptiness”, I am inspired to “Study the emptiness of drawing”. The thinking here is, with my drawings coming together from nowhere-and-everywhere, I must learn to not hold on to them. I must let them go, to continue on to nowhere-and-everywhere.

For further reading on the topic of emptiness, here is a link to a great article - http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/emptiness.html.



6. Q: I can easily imagine your work on a canvas or in a large scale format. Have you ever considered working on canvas, wood or paper at all?

A: I have tried. Last December, I bought several 8x10 inch canvas boards, and did a few drawings using acrylic (link: http://10000pages.blogspot.com/search/label/drawn-with-ink-brush). The line drawing part went OK. However, when I applied colour over them, I was not happy with the result.



I have seen many good paintings by others, and I have developed expectation on what a good painting should be like. But sadly, my own painting skill cannot meet my own expectation. It will likely take a long time before I can close the gap.



7. Q: The 10,000 Page Coloring Book is an extraordinary idea. What was the catalyst for what seems like quite an ambitious project?

A: The catalyst is emptiness. This might sound like a contradiction, but it is not.

With my goal to “pursue drawing from emptiness”, I am learning to not impose any preconception, or self-imagined inherent existence, to restrict how a drawing must turn out. By doing so, the outcome become limitless.

The overall process is quite simple. Every time after I put down a line, I will ask myself (just like the way my art teacher had asked me before) – where should the next line be placed and how should it be drawn to make the picture more interesting. By repeating this step 20 times, or 30 times, or however many times it takes, a drawing will be done. By repeating this simple step a few hundred thousand times, 10,000 drawings will be done.

Since the purpose of each additional line is to make the pictorial space more interesting, the task of drawing should never become boring.

Why did I pick 10,000? It feels about right. I recently completed the first 1,000 drawings. It took me 2 years. If I stay drawing at the same rate, it will take another 18 years to finish the remaining 9,000 drawings. Based on my current age, this is about right, assuming I do not die sooner.



8. Q: I've seen some of your stuff featured on Drawn! and Fecalface. I tend to check those sites out for inspiration. Anyone there, or anywhere else currently catching your interest lately?

A: There are 3 artists that I have recently come across whose work I immediately felt in love with. They are Dana Shutz (http://www.zachfeuer.com/danaschutz.html), Melanie Authier (http://www.melanieauthier.com/) and Angelina Gualdoni (http://kavigupta.com/exhibition/proposalsforremnants/works).



9. Q: Your work looks very playful yet challenging. What are some of your biggest challenges when doing art ?

A: I have already mentioned my challenge with painting using real brush and paint in question 6. Another challenge that I see is my sense of colour, it is very medieval.



10. Q: So finally, can I ask, where did the name Pixohammer come from?

A: When I think of pictorial spaces, I think in terms of slicing and dicing, and cutting and sculpting. This perhaps gives the thinking a more tangible feel. Similarly, with the output of my work mainly in the digital realm, I like to think of pixels as the medium, and the hammer to be the tool that nails the pixels into place.

For more wonderful art, please visit Pixo's website!