Paul Birkeland-Green BA(hons) fine art
“I make images and objects.”
Work 2013-onwards. Older ideas are here but deep mining is needed to find them; some 21,000 images and drawings from the last 21 years. Not everything new is online, I’m only giving a flavour here. Sadly much of previous work was never documented, so the vast majority…now sold, has little more than sketches and prep. drawings to show.
The theme of my work: to engage the viewer with the viewed. To explore empathy and its boundaries using the poetic: the masculine, feminine, instinct, spirit, primal, emotional, sensual, conscious, subconscious, fantasy, desire, empathy, light and dark. That’s what drives me forward…the why and the how. And to make work that allows a dialogue between us and everything else.
Butterfly: many things to many people, beauty, design, metaphor, spirit, sublime engineering. Something so elegant yet infinitely complex. Magic and science…perhaps both?
My journey:
An eclectic journey of experiences and observations. A lifetime of learning and living. I’m seen as a lateral thinker, one who looks at the world from a different viewpoint. I bring that option to my work and to the attention of others. So far most have found that contribution useful.
Never accept the definition of anything, until you have looked at it from several angles is my motto and those things you take for granted are probably the best ones to start with.
Mortality is a brief moment, it calls on many alignments. Often those that lie deep in psychic layers. Instincts and memory jarred from dormant evolution. Layer upon layer laid down by countless generations. What secrets are locked away in memory, blood and heritage? What is the key to forgotten hidden skills; what pathway to those memories? How the wheel of life turns, adapts and replicates, the mechanisms of life, death and transformation.
“Somedays I’m an Eagle, on others a Mole. To live, experience, love and perhaps record something of life along the way.”
Projects have ranged from Virtual Shopping Malls, Museums, Buildings to 1st person adventure games, installations, sculpture, paintings and software. Performance, installation, writing and presentation too. From VR, digital, painting, 3D and electronics; today’s fine artist certainly has to be flexible.
A small selection of the sketches and photos I think best explain me.
They all relate to some project or other along the way…and of course my current work.