News: Cooklin signs with Indigo Art. If you book in to a top quality hotel in pretty much any of the world's major cities these days, the chances are that you will be surrounded by artwork, designed to add an element of sophistication to the proceedings and to enhance the interior design. In recent times what is hanging on the walls is just as likely to be photography as it is to be one of the more traditional art forms, a change that has come about as attitudes regarding what constitutes a valid artwork have relaxed and photography has become more widely accepted and appreciated.

Indo Art, which is one the UK's biggest suppliers of bespoke artwork to the hotel, leisure and corporate sectors, confirms that things have changed dramatically, and that this in turn has opened up opportunities for photographers who are shooting material that is geared towards this highly specialised part of the market.

Indigo Art have selected 9 pieces from Cooklin's fine art photography collection titled 'Water Reeds'. These images were shot at Lopham Fen in Suffolk using medium format black and white film. The images were self-developed, scanned and creatively enhanced in Lightroom to give a moody atmospheric look.

Cooklin partners with Moo.com as an official Moo designer. Greeting Cards, Postcards & more [see shop]

An invitation from The Saatchi Gallery - "Your digital art is quite stunning." The Saatchi Gallery, Chelsea, London. [see press]

Fine Art Photography History - Successful attempts to make fine art photography can be traced to Victorian era practitioners such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, and Oscar Gustave Rejlander and others. In the U.S. F. Holland Day, Alfred Steiglitz and Edward Steichen were instrumental in making photography a fine art, and Steiglitz was especially notable in introducing it into museum collections.

Until the late 1970s several genres predominated, such as; nudes, portraits, natural landscapes (exemplified by Ansel Adams). Breakthrough 'star' artists in the 1970s and 80s, such as Sally Mann and Robert Mapplethorpe, still relied heavily on such genres, although seeing them with fresh eyes. Others investigated a snapshot aesthetic approach. American organizations, such as the Aperture Foundation and the Museum of Modern Art, have done much to keep photography at the forefront of the fine arts.

Framing and Print Size Until the mid 1950s it was widely considered vulgar and pretentious to frame a photograph for a gallery exhibition. Prints were usually simply pasted onto blockboard or plywood, or given a white border in the darkroom and then pinned at the corners onto display boards. Prints were thus shown without any glass reflections obscuring them. Steichen's famous The Family of Man exhibition was unframed, the pictures pasted to panels. Even as late as 1966 Bill Brandt's MoMA show was unframed, with simple prints pasted to thin plywood. (Source: Gerry Badger, Collecting Photography, p.111). Since about 2000 there has been a noticeable move toward once again showing contemporary gallery prints on boards and without glass.

Throughout the twentieth century, there was a noticeable increase in the size of prints. Small delicate prints in thin frames are now a rarity, and hi-gloss wall-sized prints are common. There is now a tendency to dispense with a frame and glass and instead to print large pictures onto blocked canvas.

PoliticsFine art photography is created primarily as an expression of the artist’s vision, but as a byproduct it has also been important in advancing certain causes. The work of Ansel Adams' in Yosemite and Yellowstone provides an example. Adams is one of the most widely recognized fine art photographers of the 20th century, and was an avid promoter of conservation. While his primary focus was on photography as art, some of his work raised public awareness of the beauty of the Sierra Nevada mountains and helped to build political support for their protection.

PRESS RELEASE - Symmetry and Abstraction by Paul Cooklin Digital Art has now become a recognisable art form and medium as technology has provided new ways for artists to bare their soul and explore their creativity. This new expression allows artists to use a multitude of techniques before arriving at their final piece which could include photography and photographic manipulation, scans and pure free flow using one of many professional drawing packages. The same principles of quality and skill still apply to these new creative forms as any other medium and should be treated accordingly. Like traditional art, digital art can take many weeks and months to create and perfect.

Much of Paul’s inspiration is drawn from his travels and surroundings. From the gentle landscapes of his current home in Suffolk to the striking juxtaposition of technology and nature that is particularly prevalent in Asia, where he lived for 8 years. It is these experiences that give rise to the fascinating coexistence of colour and shape in his work.

Wikipedia - Digital art can be purely computer-generated, such as fractals,and algorithmic art or taken from another source, such as a scanned photograph, or an image drawn using vector graphics software using a mouse or graphics tablet.[3] Though technically the term may be applied to art done using other media or processes and merely scanned in, it is usually reserved for art that has been non-trivially modified by a computing process (such as a computer program, microcontroller or any electronic system capable of interpreting an input to create an output); digitized text data and raw audio and video recordings are not usually considered digital art in themselves, but can be part of the larger project of computer art and information art. Artworks are considered digital painting when created in similar fashion to non-digital paintings but using software on a computer platform and digitally outputing the resulting image as painted on canvas.

The availability and popularity of photograph manipulation software has spawned a vast and creative library of highly modified images, many bearing little or no hint of the original image. Using electronic versions of brushes, filters and enlargers, these "Neographers" produce images unattainable through conventional photographic tools. In addition, digital artists may manipulate scanned drawings, paintings, collages or lithographs, as well as using any of the above-mentioned techniques in combination. Artists also use many other sources of electronic information and programs to create their work.[4]

3D graphics are created via the process of designing complex imagery from geometric shapes, polygons or NURBS curves to create realistic 3 dimensional shapes, objects and scenes for use in various media such as film, television, print, rapid prototyping and the special visual effects. There are many software programs for doing this. The technology can enable collaboration, lending itself to sharing and augumenting by a creative effort similar to the open source movement, and the creative commons in which users can collaborate in a project to create unique pieces of art.

Modern Art History - Roots in the 19th century Modern art began as a Western movement, particularly in painting and printmaking, and then expanding to other visual arts, including sculpture and architecture in the mid 19th century. By the late 19th century, several movements which were to be influential in modern art had begun to emerge: Impressionism, centered around Paris, and Expressionism, which emerged first in Germany.

The influences were varied: from exposure to Eastern decorative arts, particularly Japanese printmaking, to the colouristic innovations of Turner and Delacroix, to a search for greater depiction of common life, as found in the work of painters such as Millet. At the time, the generally held belief about art is that it should be accurate in its depiction of objects, but that it should be aimed at expressing the ideal, or the domestic. Thus the most successful painters of the day worked either through commissions, or through very large public exhibitions of their own work. There were official state sponsored painters' unions, and governments held public exhibitions of new fine and decorative arts regularly. Thus, breaking with idealization and depiction were not merely artistic statements, but decisions with social and economic results.

These movements did not necessarily identify themselves as being associated with progress, or personal artistic freedom, but instead argued, in the style of the times, that they represented universal values and reality. The Impressionists argued that we do not see objects, but only the light which they reflect, and that therefore painters should paint in natural light rather than in studios, and should capture the effects of light in their work.

Impressionist artists formed a group to promote their work, which, despite internal tensions, was able to mount exhibitions. The style was adopted by artists in different nations, in preference to a "national" style. These factors established the view that it was a "movement". These traits: establishment of a working method integral to the art, establishment of a movement or visible active core of support, and international adoption, would be repeated by artistic movements in the Modern period in art.

Early 20th Century Art - Among the movements which flowered in the first decade of the 20th century were fauvism, cubism, expressionism and futurism. World War I brought an end to this phase, but indicated the beginning of a number of anti-art movements, such as dada and the work of Marcel Duchamp, and of surrealism. Also, artist groups like de Stijl and Bauhaus were seminal in the development of new ideas about the interrelation of the arts, architecture, design and art education.

Modern art was introduced to America during World War I when a number of the artists in the Montmartre and Montparnasse Quarters of Paris, France fled the War. Francis Picabia (1879–1953), was responsible for bringing Modern Art to New York City. It was only after World War II, though, that the USA became the focal point of new artistic movements. The 1950s and 1960s saw the emergence of abstract expressionism, pop art, op art and minimal art; in the late 1960s and the 1970s, land art, performance art, conceptual art and photorealism have emerged. Around that period, a number of artists and architects started rejecting the idea of "the modern" and created typically postmodern works. Starting from the postwar period, fewer artists used painting as their primary medium; instead, larger installations and performances became widespread. Since the 1970s, new media art has become a category in itself, with a growing number of artists experimenting with technological means.

Contemporary Art - The term contemporary art encompasses all art being done now. It tends to include any art made from around the 1960s to the present, or after the end of the modern art period. The use of the literal adjective "contemporary" to define this period in art history is due to the lack of any recognized or dominant form or genre of art as recognized by artists or art historians and critics. The period of art since modernism is also sometimes called postmodern art, but as postmodernism refers to an approach or paradigm that many contemporary artists do not operate from, "contemporary" may be preferred as a more inclusive adjective.

Trends in Contemporary Art - The most important component within Contemporary art practice, is that it continually engages matters and issues that are presently affecting the world. Cloning, politics, economics, gender issues, human rights, or perhaps even the high price of bread being sold locally. Contemporary art operates in multiple formats, media, and is in synthesis with global, political, socio-cultural change. It is not limited by materials nor methodology. It may or may not encompass traditional formats such as painting, drawing, and sculpture, but may popular conceptual practices engage performance, installation, and multi-media works. Contemporary art is often engaging a multi-disciplinary discourse, utilizing a diverse body of skills and peoples to ultimately engage the mass with a substantial, and sometimes provocative discourse pertaining to the relevant issues shaping the world right now. It is continually engaging, and affecting the boundaries of perception.

Contemporary art should not be confused with the workings of modern art, although the trends and movements in contemporary practice may directly refer to modernism. Philosopher and art critic Arthur Danto has asserted that modernism (as well as "art history" itself) died with the making of Andy Warhol's Brillo Boxes, which functioned as art yet were indistinguishable from their real life counterparts for all relevant purposes. These sculptures therefore marked the end of any pretense that art had some essential and objectively discernible trait that separated it from non-art objects. Since the modernist days of the first half of the 20th century, art has also engaged post-modernism, neo-conceptualism, High art Lite (the Young British Artists movement (YBAs) of the mid nineties, as well as multi-culturalist work within the post-postmodern.

Contemporary artists today such as The Yes Men, Maurizio Cattelan, and Marc Quinn utilize a sophisticated language to communicate with a variety of audiences. The relationship between the viewer and the artist has grown increasingly complex over the later half of the 20th century and into the 21st. Contemporary art is becoming increasingly more global, and is slowly breaking down the cultural barriers that separate the antiquated elitism of high art from the public forum of the masses.

The future development of Contemporary art is often directed by massive biennials (The Whitney Biennial, The Venice, Sao Paulo, the Kwan Ju, the Havana...), triennials (Echigo-Tsumari), and most importantly the exhibition of documenta in Kassel, Germany.

Abstract art is now generally understood to mean art that does not depict objects in the natural world, but instead uses shapes and colours in a non-representational or non-objective way. In the very early 20th century, the term was more often used to describe art, such as Cubist and Futurist art, that does represent the natural world, but does so by capturing something of its immutable intrinsic qualities rather than by imitating its external appearance. See Abstraction. Abstract pattern making has an ancient history dating back to the earliest decorations on textiles, pottery and so on. However, the idea that the arrangement of shapes and colours is not simply to be understood as design, but as fine art dates from the nineteenth century when photography began to make the illustrative function of visual art obsolete. Even before the widespread use of photography some artists, such as James McNeill Whistler were placing greater emphasis on visual sensation than the depiction of objects. Whistler argued that art should concern itself with the harmonious arrangement of colours, just as music deals with the harmonious arrangement of sounds. Whistler's painting Nocturne in Black and Gold (1875) is often seen as a major move towards abstraction. Later artists such as Wassily Kandinsky argued that modern science dealt with dynamic forces, revealing that matter was ultimately spiritual in character. Art should display the spiritual forces behind the visual world. Wassily Kandinsky and Kasimir Malevich are generally seen as the first fully abstract artists. Kandinky's art is sometimes called 'soft edged', while Malevich's is 'hard edged'. This distinction is repeated in later abstract artists. The blurred, dynamic lines and colors used by Kandinsky developed into Abstract Expressionism, while the use of overlapping or interacting geometrical forms is found in the work of Piet Mondrian and many later artists such as the op artists of the 1960s.

To quote abstract artist, Robert Stark, "Every day is a test of each painting's ability to stand on its own. Each painting is subject to being changed, to being reworked or scraped and repainted as long as it remains in the studio. Where I often used to spend weeks on a painting, attempting to 'make a picture,' now my concerns are more about the energy of light, the mass of space, the emotions of shadows. I want the painting to meet the viewer somewhere in the middle, where the viewer brings his own experiences to bear in understanding and feeling what he is seeing.

I want my paintings to achieve the complexity and density of poetry or of a symphony, to build suggestive layers, implicit felt meaning, not merely to be entertaining bit of colour to seduce the eye. I want my paintings to be accessible to children as well as adults, and to be so simply and directly painted that it shows the act of painting for the joy and excitement of it.

Contemporary Art - PaulCooklin.com creates contemporary art using a combined blend of digital photography and digital imagery. We offer you a piece of inspirational imagination perfectly wrapped as contemporary art.

Original Art - The online gallery exhibits original art which can turn a dull space in to a unique one. Each piece is a limited edition of only 25 per size.

Canvas Art - If you're tired of looking around high street stores for the same old canvas art, why not hang something original on your walls. At PaulCooklin.com we offer something a little different.

Modern Art - These unique pieces of modern art have been passionately created by Paul Cooklin. Modern digital art is a new medium of artistic expression and one which has become widely recognised as the new oil on canvas.

Abstract Art - Allowing your mind to create its own picture is one of the reasons why abstract art is so appealing as it allows the viewer to explore their own creativity.