The main challenge for me is to bring a maximum of people to understand that art created with digital tools should be considered as art just in the same way as art made with traditional means. One has to have in mind that as new technologies became available, artists have always learned to use them to develop new ways of expression.~Werner Hornung
I arrived in Paris in the early 1970s and pursued a career in advertising. Apart from running my own studio I always felt the need to fulfill myself through my own artistic creations away from the constraints of the advertising world.
About 1993 I started to work with the computer scanning my hand made collages ( glue and scissors) enhancing them in Photoshop. Surrealism and advertising have this in common: the eagerness to attract the eye, to destabilize the viewer. I’ve been always very much attracted by photos. They consist in a kind of neutral base, my paintbox that I interpret in my own way.
I always liked to combine different styles and interacting with the machine, chasing aesthetic phantoms in the magnetic field of a hard drive is an exciting experience. Also, as randomness plays an interesting part in the process, one has to be ready to be surprised and if you don’t like what you see you can always go backwards to try another direction. That’s what I like about digital tools. What inspires me are forms and structures that I combine to make something new out of it.
Just let’s say: as a starting point one needs to have an idea. This has not changed if you work with a computer or made the cave paintings of Lascaux.
The more you practice the luckier you get.
