In this exhibition, I present two poles of my artistic practice: the contemplative stillness of traditional oil-painted still life, and the dynamic emergence of digital abstraction. Though visually and materially distinct, both modes are rooted in a sustained inquiry into systems—whether perceptual, procedural, or conceptual.
The still life works are grounded in the historical language of observation and representation. They explore the act of looking, the play of light across form, and the quiet tension between presence and absence. Each painting accumulates moments into timeless form—a distillation of reality, shaped by deliberate choices of placement, colour, and brushwork.
By contrast, the digital works are born from code—sets of instructions, parameters, and probabilities. Here, I shift from hand to algorithm, creating custom visual engines that generate images through logic and randomness. These are not predesigned images but emergent forms, unfolding through what Deleuze and Guattari call an “abstract machine”—a set of invisible relations that shape potential outcomes without dictating specific content.
The resulting visuals occupy an undefined space, resisting stable form while suggesting shifting terrains or structures not yet realised. These works operate in a suspended visual register—neither grounded nor fully abstract—where forms seem to emerge from a vaporous logic, mutable and atmospheric. They conjure a kind of digital weather: patterns without contour, images without figure—a drifting cloud of potential that never fully settles.
Together, these two practices reflect on the tension between stasis and emergence, material and immaterial, hand and system. They are complementary modes of inquiry, each revealing different aspects of form, composition, perception, and the architectures underlying creation.
Joe Daws 2025
