Brian Lee Boyce, New York City
Member Since October 2008
Artist Statement Brian Lee Boyce was born and lived in New England before moving in 1986 to New York City to study art at Cooper Union. During his years as a graphic designer for such well known offices as Walker Art Center, Pentagram Design, The Public Theater, Workman Publishing, Chanticleer and Nickelodeon, Brian worked in all aspects of the design world: publishing, advertising, education, exhibition design, marketing, and broadcast design.
Eventually Brian began expanding his use of computer technology and started using it more intimately, as a means to create images that look and feel like printmaking and drawing and painting. First it was a means for personal creative work to balance the demands of designing for other people, and to practice a purer application of color, texture, composition, and mood. It then began to become a prominent means of not just expression, but of full-on digital production.
True to the Modernist manner of making art consistent and authentic to its means of production, Brian Lee Boyce is creating an extensive body of work that is fundamentally digital yet with the nuance and subtlety of traditional painting, drawing, and printmaking. He explains his work this way: "In my pieces, I want to break the barrier between analog and digital. The computer is a fantastic means to generate vision after vision. It is incredibly useful and gratifying to explore a phenomenal range of options without destroying the original kernels of inspiration."
His work is clearly influenced by the childhood memory of textures, colors and shapes of the Vermont landscape around him. Brian’s love of the city is also obvious--his choice of subject matter weaves between industrial and natural settings showing a love for random beauty. He says of his work "The real aesthetic of a city, to me, is the unplanned, the organic, and the residual. The chaos of 100 years worth of change along a city roofline superimposed on a neighboring scattering of watertowers feels as natural to me as a cluster of trees on the side of a hill, and as cozy as an intimate still life. A block of buildings feels like bottles on a table, or passengers hovering on a subway platform."
Boyce adds: "For me art has to have life. It has to change before my eyes. It has to take me in and let my eye and mind wander. I need to be able to look at it again and again, for a long time. If I feel a piece warrants a good long look, I know it has a good long life ahead."
Click to save as artist's preferred kit 
