The first portrait in this series is that of Joshua Davis, designer, artist and technologist in New York. He creates hand-drawn assets and with programs on the computer generates compositions which are all unique. The process is called dynamic abstraction. The pieces are aesthetic and available for posters, web design, ceramics and other objects, like his just released iPhone art app.: JD Reflect.

The work of Joshua was a revelation for me. I had never seen anyone make such work for Internet, but it was mainly his experimental work on his site Praystation that was extremely captivating. His book Flash to the core (2002) brought me onto actionscript and although I learned a lot, I’m not a programmer. So I pulled out somewhere half way acrionscript 2, and also to become an Joshua follower was not my idea. It is mainly his way of thinking that interests me. The process he is using.

His work and experiments have never lost my attention and just recently he showed a demo on Flickr of symbols that form the shape. I asked him if that was also possible on a portrait, I always see the possibilities in things, and he wrote that theoretically it was possible but…..

Eventually this is what brought me to the idea to create portraits of artists and designers situated within their own work or in a contexts that fits them. The first thing I do is draw the portrait. That way I come close to someone and it is necessary to live with it for a while, figuratively that is.

Joshua always makes his presentations available for download and from the presentation of 2008 I chose a piece called ‘Tropism-02′. This I used to blend his portrait in. Of course I have made choices to eliminate certain parts or reposition colours, because the most important task was to keep his face recognizable. On the left side of the portrait the work functions as background, on the right is seems to flow over his face to almost take possession of it. The shadow part of his face gives more depth. That depth I applied on some of the symbols, on the left side especially to create a fictitious horizon.

It was a very complex task, because his work exists of many layers that look apparent flat in the end, but to reproduce them the way I did in this portrait was a real challenge.