Gary Harvey
At the 20 year mark of my television directing career my life was paused with tongue cancer. While I recovered and made my way back to my career, I was living a new reality with a near invisible disability until I ate or worse, spoke. That was especially transformative to someone who'd built an entire career on his tool of speech and the ability to transfer complex abstractions to large groups of people in order to realize a singular vision. It seemed at the time like a hill too high to climb. The need to communicate ideas was still a powerful motivator.
Looking back, I feel like I was searching for more context in my communication. Something more concrete. With more substance than I was able to muster with the physical tools I had left. That search lead me to fine art in 2017. Something I hadn't done since high school. Fine art.
My process is nearly entirely produced in Photoshop. Some of my earlier materials
begin as photos which are morphed into shape and textures using the light attributes
of the pixels of the photos. Currently, much of what I do starts with a simple circle,
layered with gradients and moved and copied and pasted and blended then run
through several other shaping algorithms. It's a bit like shaping putty, using my
trackpad and index finger. I little bit of finger painting really.
The career is back on track and I have taught myself how to speak without a tongue. And the grand takeaway, I now have a budding fine art career as well. Thank you for being part of that journey.