David Camp on The IDEA #7

DAVID CAMP

"Leap of Faith" by Thomas Itty

I was born in 1950 in Madison, Wisconsin, a liberal university city, and the state capital of Wisconsin. I've always shown an extreme aptitude for two things, mathematics and art. The first 20 years of my life revolved around math, science, religion, and metaphysics. I did so well in high school math competitions that I was elected a member of the Mathematical Association of America while still in high school. I enrolled at the University of Wisconsin intending to major in either mathematics or theoretical physics, but it was a turbulent time. Outwardly, amid a backdrop of anti-war protests, the physics building I worked in was bombed, and inwardly I was too restless for a discipline as sterile as math, so I shifted my attention to the arts and humanities.

During the next 25 years I laid the groundwork for the art I am doing now by studying art at the University of Wisconsin, but my real focus during this period was writing. I spent a number of years working on a serious novel, which I eventually deemed too personal to publish, followed by work on a metaphysical fantasy novel, The Inferno. I had several sequels in mind and would be working on them now if computer art hadn't come along.

I bought my first computer in 1995 and my first art program a year later. As soon as I began working in this medium, I realized it was the art form I had been searching for all my life. I am a visual person, with a great love of color and form. I also love sculptural objects and solid shading. When I began working in 3D programs, something that was easy for me because of my math background, I found a very intuitive and powerful tool for creating abstract, surreal, and fantasy imagery. What makes my work powerful and unique is that I have an organized mathematical mind, and also an eye for color and balance, as well as a strong mystical bend. Within a very short time people were writing to say that I was their favorite web artist. My work has an effect on people. I focus entirely on web art, in the form of online galleries, but one rare print, my first Goddess piece, did appear as the featured piece in a show in New York's Lincoln Center. I continue to do renders only for the web because high resolution renders for prints would slow me down too much. I average more than a piece a day.

Beginning in late 2000 I took an interest in the work of Dante. My novel, although titled The Inferno, had been unrelated to his writings. Art is a different matter. Shortly after September 11th, 2001, I began work on what will eventually be a significant web art project. It will consist of 100 online galleries running parallel to the cantos of Dante's Comedy, as well as 256 online galleries that are purely my own, an alternate metaphysical construction.

I do not create my imagery to make a living. I have been supporting myself for many years working in the main research library at the University of Wisconsin. I create because I have to. There is something in me that has to get out. I want to be an artist of light.