Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Interview with the Barbican

The Barbican Centre in London published an interview with me, in connection with the ongoing exhibition "Into The Unknown: A Journey Through Science Fiction." The exhibit will be up for one more month, ending September 1.
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Creating Dinotopia with James Gurney

6 comments:

Newt said...

I know you've posted a lot of this Dinotopia backstory on the blog, but it's nice to read it all in one place. I wish I could see the exhibit in person.

Bob said...

"One of the reasons I wanted to paint images of people and dinosaurs together was simply to see how big we would be relative to them, since most dinosaur paintings had no sense of scale."

Yes! Viewing for example the Titanosaur at the American Museum of Natural History demonstrates how big life is and how small we are -- quite a humbling experience. I love the way you've weaved this concept into Dinotopia. For example it's evident in the Codes ("Others first, self last."), as well as in everyday activities there. In Dinotopia, life is rarely a zero-sum game.

markmors said...

I have been wondering if you basically learned to draw when you were a child?
I presume you needed to show some skill in that to get into Art Center? : )

1 click dissertation review said...

Can you share the link of your interview with us? And as per exhibition is concern, I am going to visit it and hope that it will be worth visiting. Thank you for sharing it with us

James Gurney said...

Medical, the link is: http://blog.barbican.org.uk/2017/07/creating-dinotopia-with-james-gurney/

Markmors, I learned to draw around age 13, from studying books on drawing and just practicing. Learning to paint came later, in my 20s, after art school. And of course I'm still learning!

Bob, exactly. That was a big part of Dinotopia. Take a frame of reference and then flip it.

Newt, thanks. The show will travel to Greece and Denmark next, and possibly other places after that.

Norman Boyd said...

I was fortunate enough to go to firstly the Hokusai exhibition at the British Museum and then in the afternoon to the Gurney....sorry, the Barbican exhibition. Your paintings are amazing but those Pre-Raphaelite frames are something else!