17.5 Lee Griggs

Lee Griggs

Lee Griggs is an artist who works solely with digital mediums. He is completely reclusive with his personal information, and I could not find any bio on him. But, he is transparent with his works of art.

 Griggs uses a digital rendering program called Arnold to create eerily realistic models of human faces.

They are uncanny, because they look incredibly REAL - they are almost photorealistic - but they are NOT real. They are just models that can be easily manipulated into strange shapes and compositions, which further blurs the lines between what is real and what is not, because real life is not easily manipulated, but we see it happen here.

Griggs often experiments with morphing INCREDIBLY REALISTIC faces into surreal shapes and forms, which is incredibly confusing to the eye. Very surreal, and very uncanny.

This piece above is very unnerving because of the realistic skintones, but nothing else is realistic. The holes in his face remind me of a specific phobia called trypophobia, which is a fear of many small holes or bumps altogether.

I am specifically interested in Griggs's abstract work, seen below. He manipulates his 3D models in curious ways, using abstract colours and patterns to create surreal portraits - most of them are no longer recognisable as faces at all.

This piece reminds me of my own work because of the organic, flowing patterns that look like flowing water.

An awful lot of his work is geometric, which doesn't relate to my work at all... I prefer organic shapes. But, most of his work is VERY colourful just like mine.

I find this piece specifically unnerving because of the single eye remaining untouched. We can tell that he is human, but the cracks in his skin make us wary and sympathetic (cracks in the skin seem painful).

I appreciate how Griggs turns something incredibly realistic, into something incredibly abstract, colourful and enigmatic. This is similar to what I try to achieve, in my own work.

It is often surreal and uncanny, especially when there are holes left for the eyes and mouth, like the image above.

This is the third artist that I have come across who uses 3D models, and I have decided that I would like to experiment with models too.