Ford Weisberg

All my life I have been an artist. Music was my first love, and I've played and performed on wind instruments and guitar since childhood. At first it was folk and ethnic music, influenced by my father's mandolin playing. Later, I trained in classical music and performed Baroque, Renaissance and Medieval music on Recorders and original woodwinds. Along the way I became interested in Irish Traditional music and played my Tinwhistle, Flute and Recorder with pipers, fiddlers and banjo players, and wrote original Irish dance tunes. Equally important, I was always drawing throughout childhood. Drawing led to photography, and then to photo-based artwork incorporating drawing in the computer. Now, I create full-fledged Digital Art and Digital Painting, using a tablet with a pressure-sensitive stylus, and computer software to make it all possible. My latest work is Digital Art and Digital Painting (earlier work was photography, photo-collage and photo-based art). This latest work is Computer Art, dependent upon computer software and the use of a tablet with a pressure-sensitive stylus. I create organically inspired imaginary forms, real in the sense of tangible, but non-existent. When not using related colors, I create these forms in near-complementary or other sets of high-contrast colors. When I do use high contrast color sets, I choose ready-made colors from a chart or wheel, only occasionally mixing colors on a (digital) palette. My work is involved in a dialog with art of the past and present. Although my pieces may appear highly structured, my working method begins as pure play, and remains as unedited as possible for as long as possible. Only later is the work tempered by conscious composition. In this way, I feel I owe much to the Surrealists and Abstract Expressionists of the past. Digital Art and Digital Painting and its software offer me an ideal means for experimentation with new techniques, and aid in the search for a new means of expression. Since the software can make 'paint' do things that paint can't really do, I have been forced to rethink every aspect of the visual and plastic process. One component of my art that contributes to its ultimate synthesis is the inspiration I derive from Nature, not only its flora and fauna, but its sounds as well. This combines with my musical self, and a partial synaesthesia, which in my case includes some sounds and colors, as well as some shapes, letters and words. It is difficult to pin down exactly how these components inform my art. However, using a creative working method that relies primarily on play and a minimum of editing, I am also accessing my inner life as a source of content.

Queens College, C.U.N.Y. (Music) Private Training in Fine Art