Oscar

You describe your art in three words as “Hope, Hope, Hope.” Why do you choose to emphasize hope so strongly?

I see the visual world as having an immediacy that is however not straightforward in an interpretive sense; understanding of the world through what we see or what we think we see. Subjectivity at times plays a great part in how we understand the world. You asked me why I described my art in three words; Hope, hope, hope, they could be seen as underpinning the work that I’m trying to put into the world. I hope that the work will be interpreted in the way I intended it to be; I hope that it will touch people in a way that they will feel motivated to go further with the work’s message, to dig deeper into its meaning through other media; I hope that the work is in tune with the current zeitgeist and it shines, to some degree, with hope for a better world.

How did your early experience in advertising shape your current visual language?

Advertising is a very demanding environment; advertising is unforgiving of failure; therefore you have to make sure that your technique, visual language and aesthetic is sound, that your pre-production and post production is very solid. You have a limited time in which to achieve an image; so the discipline advertising gave me was one that has been very useful in producing my artwork. I wake up in the morning, I have an idea, usually around something I’ve read or discussed with friends perhaps the night before and then I immediately set out to create an image from those experiences. Advertising’s impact on my work was that it made me see the value of a complicated idea expressed in a simplified form. My visual language is embedded in the work through the ideas I bring to the work, I try to keep the visual language clear and free from obfuscation.

Your works often deal with pressing issues such as climate change and democracy. Do you see your art as activism, or more as personal reflection?

I see all art as having to some extent a political dimension. I set out to convey my response to the current flow of news with a focus on climate, war and injustice to humanity and the natural world. I think all art is a personal reaction to what is happening in the world. Sometimes it manifests by responding to local or domestic issues. In my case the work attempts to express broader themes on a more universal level than a local level.

One interest I have is the claim a country has of being a functioning democracy. This can in one way be tested by the amount of freedom that the country gives to art; by not shutting it down or hoodwinking the people by saying art that challenges the establishment has no place or no meaningful voice in that country. Art has a long tradition of activism; I’m just following that tradition.

Oscar | Lost Hope

How do you balance clarity of message with preserving a sense of mystery or discovery in your images?

Preserving a sense of mystery or discovery in my images is obtained by not making them too obvious, but obvious enough so that messages are revealed. There’s always going to be a little bit of flexibility in the image’s meaning, but hopefully the viewer is sent in a particular direction and hopefully there’s enough signifiers in the image to have a clarity of message. But I think an image is like a free radical and once it’s out there peoples’ interpretations and understanding and fancies cling onto it. I don’t think clarity is an easy balance to achieve. I hope I have in some ways done that; for example the image of the elephant lying on a mound of books I hope is fairly clear. The books, they’re very old books, they have a lot of history to them and the elephant is in this particular case a symbol of knowledge, it too represents something old, it’s been around a long time. The sunflowers, well they are a symbol that’s used quite a lot in art; If I think of Anselm Kiefer’s use of sunflowers they have a meaning to them one of decay and death, but also the possibility for new growth and rebirth, here is my hope for the future again, and of course the image is a kind of funeral pyre because the elephant is sitting on books that are being burnt, that in itself is quite provocative as an image. We live at a time when knowledge is being challenged by forces that want to suppress it for political gain.

With AI and digital manipulation becoming more present, how do you think trust in images has changed?

The reality is you could never really trust an image. It was only an equivalent of a particular viewpoint. The photographer could in some ways be seen as a nascent picture editor. Their use of 35mm, medium or large format cameras, and even a smart phone are all ways of framing and editing the world to a particular viewpoint. Before the digital age, black-and-white film was thought to offer a true rendering of the scene yet the manipulation of the analogue processes was quite considerable from its beginnings. Image cropping, the type of lens and the paper grade used, all these factors would give a different mood, a different emphasis, a different interpretation. It’s not only that you can’t trust the image anymore, the question is can you really trust the producer of that image and Is it coming from a reliable trusted source? Ask what are the politics of the paper or the magazine or platform it’s produced in? Who owns it? What are the vested interests?

Don’t be passive, don’t allow political amnesia to rule; then in the age of AI you might get to a reliable truth.

You mentioned staying anonymous so that the art speaks for itself. Do you think anonymity gives your work more freedom?

It frees me up in terms of ego, it’s not about a name, it’s the art that’s important; not having my photograph displayed helps in that process for focussing on the art; as I said earlier, images are free radicals and my picture will not add in any meaningful way to the images, if anything it introduces a personality that can only get in the way. At the end of the day I hope to have done my job well and those images are actually conveying something of what I’d like to get out into the world. It’s the image that’s important, the effect of the images that is important. I’m just some dealer in images helping them on their way.

Oscar | Earth Axe

What emotions or reactions do you hope a viewer takes away after seeing your art?

What emotions and reactions? I hope the viewer takes something positive away after seeing my art, but when they are out in the world they are on their own. I hope I just pointed them in the right direction. I hope they find a good home.