William Butterick / Fine Art Painting BA(Hons)

I’d like to think that screens are honest: tools that display representations of the world through pixels that form the images we create. However, there is a problem in the formal logic of data and code that means these insubstantial pictures are only ever an approximation, the assembly of information through a system of logic. The machines we create for systems are attempts at making something in our own image. We call the microprocessor the ‘brain’ and say the machine has ‘memory’, but they are not like us, they are binary projections of ourselves, lacking human qualities of emotion and introspection. Nevertheless, in the cold code of a computers system there is a characteristic we both share; our vulnerability to destruction. I am interested in the way destruction as a process, both mechanically and biologically, can become an act of creation, highlighting the importance of failure, chance, memory and nostalgia.

 

 

 

Jagged colours of reds green and blues painting
The burn, these pixels (2020)

 

Blue White and Purple jagged painting
In brief indecisive dreams (2020)

 

Blue Yellow and Black abstract painting
Where screens stumble onto their own reality