Featured Artist of the Month : Adam Ryan Sep. 2022 | TheArtList - Art & Photo Calls for Visual Artists and Photographers.

Adam Ryan

Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Adam Ryan is an Atlanta-based artist studying painting and drawing at Kennesaw State University. Though his formal education has been primarily traditional, Ryan enjoys working in digital media. His work is inspired by spirituality, meditation, trance music, and the psychedelic experience. Combining traditional painting with digital collage and glitch-art techniques, Ryan is focused on creating striking, complex, colorful, visionary works.

How and when did you start creating art?

Art has always been a hobby for me since I was a child but it was after high school that I really started to immerse myself in studio practice and began to hone my skills. I started to produce pet portraits using pastel on suede board. It started as a way to pass the time but ended in me getting several commissions. This is when I started to see it not only as hobby, but as a possible career and I decided to pursue it full time.

What media and genres do you work in?

My favorite media to work with is digital painting. The digital medium affords a lot of freedom for me as an artist. I can effortlessly switch between and combine different mediums, change the size of the canvas im working on, and rearrange elements of the composition “on the fly” the possibilities are endless.

Who or what are your influences?

My favorite working artists at the moment are Android Jones, Louis Dyer, and Maki Ohkojima. As far as art movements go, my work is influenced by transcendental art and surrealism. I also draw heavy influence from spirituality, magick, trance music, and psychedelia. A lot of what I try to do with my work is to portray a sort of vision from beyond or capture the ineffable essence of the spiritual experiences that have shaped me into who I am.

What was your inspiration for
Transmogrify
?

As an exercise in one of my classes at Kennesaw State, one of our professors tasked us with coming up with a prompt for an upcoming student art exhibition. The prompt was to be centered upon the idea “manifestation of the goddess.” Immediately I thought of the word Transmogrify- which means to transform in a magical or surprising manner. I thought it was perfect but my professor shot it down with the comment “how would you paint “transmogrify?”

I took that as a challenge and created this piece. The image of the figure was conceived in deep meditation. She is the goddess of transformation, patron deity of the alchemical process of meditation- the transmutation of the human soul.

Describe your creative process?

The universe is made of chaos. Through my art process. I try to turn that chaos into art. Without a final image in mind I make marks by editing, destroying, erasing, and endlessly repeating shapes and colors. The process is a chaotic combination of traditional painting techniques, digital collage, and glitch art.

Eventually, through the noise, an image begins to form, and I realize the marks were anything but random. If I could easily distill it into words, the art would not be worth making at all.

The fact is, I am not really sure where the images come from. However, with each piece I make I get closer to understanding.

What are you working on currently?

Currently I am working on completing my degree. I am a senior at Kennesaw State University and school takes up a lot of my time. I have been working lately on improving my skills at rendering the human figure. It has been a weak point for some of my work in the past and I am at a point where I no longer wish to just work on the things I am already good at but to improve on my weaker areas and I can not wait to see how it will improve my art overall. I am also thrilled to be taking part in the upcoming exhibizone international online exhibition. Another of my pieces- Kundalini will be on display this September 9th through November 11th.

What are your near/long term goals as an artist?

My short term goals are just to continue to develop my style and keep improving. One day, after school, I see myself taking my art into the performance space by creating live visuals for concerts. There is a certain magic to creating art live, being a part of that whole experience sounds like a dream to me.

Long term, I would like to pursue a masters in art therapy. I have found art to be a wonderful, healing outlet for me, and really want to use art as an outlet to help other people and make a difference.