Tony Amico

Since the spring of 2001, prompted in part by an interest in crop circles, I have been evolving a new computer-based artistic practice whereby I create visual images of extraordinary vibrance, precision, and elegance. Each work is the endpoint of an aesthetic quest to discover a fresh instance of a uniquely fulfilling visual experience.

My approach facilitates the coordinated manipulation of form, color, texture, and illumination as separate aspects of an integrated compositional field. This gives me access to a range of plasticity and control heretofore unavailable in existing method...

Since the spring of 2001, prompted in part by an interest in crop circles, I have been evolving a new computer-based artistic practice whereby I create visual images of extraordinary vibrance, precision, and elegance. Each work is the endpoint of an aesthetic quest to discover a fresh instance of a uniquely fulfilling visual experience.

My approach facilitates the coordinated manipulation of form, color, texture, and illumination as separate aspects of an integrated compositional field. This gives me access to a range of plasticity and control heretofore unavailable in existing methods, traditional or digital. Thus, I create each new image through a dynamic process of iterative exploration, experiment, discovery, and selection. Sometimes I am aiming for an intended result while at other times, my creative process is more tentative and open-ended.

Many of these pictures exhibit surface qualities—texture, shading, and illumination—that are characteristic of traditional paintings. This lends an appearance to high-resolution details such that when rendered as a giclée print, the image seen evokes stunning sensations of tactile depth and presence.

With a few obvious exceptions, there is nothing representational to be found in my compositions and nothing in them that conveys a plausible narrative, either literary, conceptual, or polemical. For that reason (among others), I have chosen to title each work with a 4-character nonsense syllable. These names have been computer-generated to be pronounceable but not meaningful in English and are randomly assigned.

Because most of my pictures are free of culturally-laden iconographic references, people of all backgrounds, demographic groups, and world cultures can connect with them as pure experience. My intent is to challenge the viewer to discover his or her own unique aesthetic relationship in each visual encounter.

I have been involved with computers and information technology since high school. Other related interests include classical cybernetics, the philosophy and science of consciousness, and the scientific investigation of crop circles. A native of Massachusetts, I now live in the countryside of the Virginia piedmont in a county with only one traffic light.