Cam Floyd
As artists come to balance working in both digital and traditional mediums, the possibilities for creation are slowly expanding, while in some ways the techniques are dying. This is an old argument, and not one I’m going to dig into here (though for the price of a beer at a bar I will talk about it for hours), but take a look at the work of someone like Cam Floyd and you will see that there can be a happy medium between the two. Cam creates work with the traditional tools like charcoal, graphite, paint and ink, but then brings that work into the digital realm to add subtle details and hues. And it’s exactly what needs to happen with his work. His style is smudgy and rough, and the digital gives it some sharp lines as counterpoint to the coarseness. This is a balance, and in Cam’s case it’s done beautifully, creating a mix of smooth and blurry, washes and overlapping values that create a richer, more complex emotional pull. Juxtaposition like this has been used for centuries in all the arts, and now with digital tools refining their controls and behaviors, there are two more ideas to be pitted against each other: digital and analog. Like I said, I won’t drag out the pros and cons of either one, but rather I might say that in that ages old argument the right answer isn’t necessarily one or the other, but possibly both.
