JULIAN OPIE, CORNISH COAST 1: LANTIVET COAST, CORNISH COAST SERIES, SIGNED DIGITAL PRINT, EDITION OF 20, 2017
Depicted in the artist’s highly recognisable multi-layered style, Cornish Coast 1: Lantivet Coast is a digital print from Julian Opie’s Cornish Coast series (2017). This print features a landscape scene of a green field on the coast, showing the sea just on the horizon, rendered in simplified shapes and bright colours.
Created using computer drawing programmes to manipulate digital photographs, these prints are inspired by holidays taken by the artist to Cornwall. Much of Opie’s work has been compared to the digitally rendered landscapes of video games in the way that they mimic a simultaneously familiar yet otherworldly sphere. Indeed, this print is uncanny in the sense of familiarity it strikes within the viewer, in part due to Opie’s depersonalised, slick style rendered through computer technology.
Explaining why he chose the Cornish coast as his subject matter, Opie has said, “Cornwall is beautiful. You see the sky and the sea and the green fields. These colours surround you and fill your eyes, creating an environment, a space to be in that echoes the colours and shapes on your retina. Anything and anywhere is visible but beauty means that you can hold it in your eyes, make a picture of it.”
Read more about the Cornish Coast series by Julian Opie.
ABOUT JULIAN OPIE
British artist Julian Opie challenges traditional approaches to portraiture through his digitally designed and seemingly contradictory, depersonalised works. Working also with landscapes and cityscapes, Opie’s highly stylised work involves the reduction of photographs or short films into figurative reproductions created using computer software. The hallmarks of his artistic style are portraits and animated walking figures, rendered with minimal detail in black line drawing. Learn more about Julian Opie.
