Page 8 - Demo

Introduction Welcome to my world. I am Mol Smith, born in 1950 as Maurice Smith, an ordinary person in an ordinary town, at an ordinary time. I found it very difficult to get going in this world. It may have been shyness or just an innate sense of its absurdity%u2014life, that is! At the time of writing this, I have reached the mediocre age of 59. I will be 60 years old in November of this year. I have loved imagery all my life since I saw my first picture book. I have loved women as much, as soon as I reached adulthood. I consider the universe we live in to be a kind of computer programme running on behalf of the universe itself, desperately trying to work out a way for it to survive its certain death, through entropy. I believe I am just a small cog in that massive computation. As such, I find this reality unreal. I found out this month that my own days are now quite limited as a consequence of smoking cigarettes since the age of 14. This sobering thought has spurred me on to finally publish my art and explorations into the imagery of women over the last decade. This is it: my small contribution to the gradual awakening of human awareness and our collective self assessment. Why say that? Well, I believe all we can really hope for is that we come to understand ourselves and our role, if there is one, in the universe. Our individual lives are short and prone to mistakes and regrets. We can only really achieve anything of value or worth through the repeating of new generations attempting to do better than those prior to them. I have lived during a time of monumental change in our technological capability, almost entirely brought about by the advance of computers and their access by ordinary people across the entire world. I pride myself on being among the first generation of digital artists working in this era and using this technology to produce startlingly realistic pictures of hitherto impossible scenarios. In fact, I am one of the few artists merging real life photography with 3D virtual objects and scenes: all my female models are real flesh and blood. In this book, I do not just wish to present my work to you, I wish to talk about the images, the women in them, and a lot more besides. I would like you to know more about me, not least because this work and possibly one or two other things I have been involved with, is all that will remain of me (along with my daughter Kelly-Anne, and my grand-daughters%u2014Megan, Alice, and Maddie) in a few more years when my presence in this reality ceases. I have been to art galleries where guides and so called art experts prattle on about this painting or that one, and what the artist was trying to achieve, when in fact%u2014they haven%u2019t a clue. How could they possibly know what was in the mind of any artist who lived over 100 years in the past? The artist her/his self probably didn%u2019t even have a clear idea of what they wanted to achieve. Mostly, they are using canvas and paint to explore facets of themselves and making the journey public. So, although I will always remain uncelebrated as a remarkable artist, I hope at least my time in art and its significance to the evolution of future art (which will be immersive) will give cause for some future historians at least to glance at my work. And rather than have them guessing and telling a load of made-up nonsense, I wish to explain my stuff myself, here, where it%u2019s clear for all to see. I do hope I take you on a journey with me which you find exciting, disturbing, and unforgettable. Artists tend to reflect aspects of their culture, era, and people of their time. But I live in a period where films, computer games, computer effects, 3D, holographic imagery, advertising, and television have all become merged with our perception of the real world. My art reflects this too. We live in an era with one half of our minds in reality, and the other half in fantasy worlds%u2014some Me aged 53