Solvista (introduction issue)
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= SOLVISTA =
= (introduction issue) =
= THE FANTASTIC VISIONS OF PETER ANDREW JONES =
= (e-mail abridged edition - ISSN 1462-3676) =
=http://:www.btinternet.com/~solvista/solvista.html=
====================================================CONTENTS
- INTRODUCTION
- FOCAL BLUR - (Tales from the creative edge)
- * "NEO-SOMNIUM" (code swa222) (from this quarter's SOLVISTA CD)
- FAQs DECODING & VIEWING PICTURES
- VISIONS BEYOND THE OBVIOUS
- OTHER PUBLICATIONS
- CREDITS
solvista@btinternet.com
(c) 1998 Copyright Solvista.
(c) 1998 Peter Andrew Jones.
Absolutely no use without prior written permission
All rights reserved including throughout Cyberspace.
1. INTRODUCTION
Welcome to SOLVISTA!
(A light-hearted introduction to the world of Peter Andrew Jones, for those not already familiar with his work.)
Famous for his key ambassadorial role in settling the Galaxy's longest running and most bitter conflict, between the Green Lizard Men of Altair 4 and the Vegetarian Slimemolds of Bizarre 7, perhaps these achievements have overshadowed the lesser-known accomplishments of Peter Andrew Jones.
Variously described over the aeons as "The man who created the (SF illustration) genre" (Mike lake, late of Forbidden Planet Bookshop London/NYC), "The most successful (SF) Artist working in Britain" (Octopus Books) and "The legendary illustrator" (Role Player magazine) and even "Genius" (Group One Films Los Angeles) the vast array of projects that Peter has been involved in reflects his quarter-century of commitment to creating fantastical images that span the girth of the world, and probably probe into the deepest depths of space if we but could go there and visit a retail store to see.
In his pursuit of the ultimate image he has nearly fallen out of a helicopter while shooting reference footage for a BBC News programme, almost been blown off the deck of a British warship while sketching waves in a force six storm in the Bay of Biscay, and even now is the subject of a contract taken out on him by the combined cafe owners of the world, in retaliation for the sheer number of napkins and serviettes he has appropriated as sketchbook pages over the years.
President of LAP (life after photoshop) he has made Doctor Who's Tardis materialise inside the Two Ronnies Christmas Show, helped them walk up the Yellow Brick Road, designed sleep chambers for The Tripods, festooned the New York subway with his posters for The Sword and the Sorcerer movie, helped explain to TV viewers why Soyuz and Apollo docked in Earth"s orbit and helped Disney take the viewing public around the world in 24 hours by TV with the creation of giant hand-painted replicas of the world.
At the same time he has created hundreds of Science Fiction and Fantasy Book covers, video and software covers, games books, horror novels, record covers and visualised video scenarios for Ford, Plessy and more.......
Some of his works have adopted a Shamanic approach, following a mysterious virus-based illness in January 1998.
During this "near death" period he lost track of large passages of time over several months due to the extremely painful nature of this illness. When it was finally over he was suddenly able to "connect" with the emotions and feelings of people whose experiences might seem to some, abnormal, or "strange". He found that UFO abductees very often express similar views and feelings which he did not have until his illness and which now seen quite clear to him.
He is now as centred in "inner space" as outer space,
Thus.....
He has now created SOLVISTA, which is many things to many people.....
SOLVISTA MAGAZINE is an electronic magazine of the fantastical, with stories and images.
SOLVISTA MAGAZINE is for computer desktop users of fantastical images.
SOLVISTA MAGAZINE is for enthusiasts and collectors of Fantastical Art.
SOLVISTA MAGAZINE is for enthusiasts and collectors of Science Fiction.
SOLVISTA MAGAZINE is for enthusiasts/collectors of NEW AGE images.
SOLVISTA MAGAZINE is for collectibles enthusiasts.
SOLVISTA MAGAZINE is for those concerned with transcendence and visualisation.
SOLVISTA MAGAZINE is for enthusiasts of otherness.
SOLVISTA MAGAZINE is for those with an interest in UFOs and Aliens abduction.
SOLVISTA MAGAZINE is for those with an interest in NEW AGE subjects.
SOLVISTA MAGAZINE is for those who seek creative unblocking.
SOLVISTA MAGAZINE is for those who question the now.
SOLVISTA MAGAZINE is, above all, the imagination of Peter Andrew Jones - Try it and see! Subscription not only ensures updates on imagery but also provides visual bliss, spiritual harmony and an ongoing update of what the Grays may be doing on our planet................
(It is said they _ARE_ here, you know? But, subscription ensures you have a chance to transcend abduction trauma and creative blockages.........) For both home and professional users of imagery, there is also THE SOLVISTA IMAGE LIBRARY, a growing collection of Fantastical images for traditional and multimedia use.
SOLVISTA is the official publication of both this and THE SOLAR WIND LIBRARY of his Science Fiction and Fantasy imagery.
SOLVISTA MAGAZINES are distributed to registered subscribers everywhere and everywhen, unless they are in the cafe business.....
Debbie Vernell-Jones,
Editor SOLVISTA
2. FOCAL BLUR - (Tales from the creative edge......)
***NOTE *** =
if you downloaded this issue from a net archive you may need to request the image attachment direct from us. To do this <mailto:solvista@btinternet.com> placing the words "request attachment swa222" in the SUBJECT line.
You can also see an overview of other images & newsletters on our web page at >
http://www.btinternet.com/~solvista/solvista.html
and back-issues are available at >
http://www.btinternet.com/~solvista/solcat.html
******* "NEO-SOMNIUM" (Starchild/Monolith) - swa222
(from "Emergent species" SOLVISTA CD)
....... I created this piece for the UK edition of a reprint for the 2001 book. The Publisher had been trying to re-market the book to a new audience at the time the 2010 movie had been out and running for awhile. There had been much discussion with the Art Director at Arrow Books in London as to what was considered the best way to re-launch the book.
Whilst it seemed to me that there were major key elements in the 2001 story and these needed to be shown in some configuration or other, I was requested to come up with very different concepts such as referencing the "Stargate" sequence in the film and this was duly done, although I could not see this working as well as a "traditional stance'. Quite some time passed, maybe a year or so, and round it came again. There was again, much discussion as to how this might be done.
My thing has always been "visual flashes" which just "present themselves" when it comes to ideas and picture content, I don't really have to think UP ideas, they just sprout forth whether I want them or not, in many ways they are reactions to things and even rebellions against things or passions for things, and I'd always loved the film but more so the symbology in it, it always touched me very deeply, and I just knew that I "had" to visualise certain aspects of it, so in the event, I went off and "did my own thing" while these discussions were going on and to cut a story short, I got a call from the Art Director telling me that "a cheer went up and a round of applause at the cover meeting" and much credit goes to Art Dennis Barker for backing my hunch on this approach.
But, in many ways, this response puzzled me. I was not displeased with the recognition but more confused as to why the obvious was not seen beforehand by others. I began to realise that for years I'd worked without even understanding one of my own innate skills or tendencies, in that I just get these "inspirational flashes" and I really don't have to work at it, in fact, if an idea doesn't come via that route now I tend to be suspicious of its merit to a certain extent.
So that event was as instrumental as a few others around that time in triggering what has become known as "S O L V I S T A" which I suppose is a conceptual view of projects and ideas, rather than just an illustrative rendering. In some ways this is not a knew idea in my work, far from it, but in others it is somewhat new in that I am very conscious of this approach, whereas perhaps previously it was certainly more unconscious.
Once the seed had been sewn, and the realisation had begun to set in, I knew then that I was really going down the road of "self-propulsion" in terms of idea generation, in short, I'd Art Directed it and it was at that point that my picture library concept really took off - if you can do it once you can do it a hundred times, and as such, I tended after that point to get very into the whole idea of self- generated images and self-published concepts rather than just illustrating author's ideas, in fact, I guess I eventually became the author in that while I was already slipping heavily into self-generated concepts (as opposed to self generated solutions to design projects) it wasn't until I was ill, some time later, that the idea of putting into paint a personal experience that had some science- Fiction type root came about.
I had never really had a moment's illness in my entire life, certainly nothing serious, but when I contracted some strange virus-driven illness that nearly wiped me out (terminally) I found, perhaps not surprisingly, that I had an altered view of "reality" after the experience.
That "near death" experience birthed a huge range of ideas and concepts, images, writings, often about "inner space" ideas as well as outer space. In one case I was, to my amazement, having identical feelings of dis- orientation as UFO abductees for example, and without going into minutiae, I not only experienced the same sort of emotions I, eventually, came to understand WHY, and that certainly re-arranges your view of so-called "reality" for sure!
I promise you, there are many zones of existence on the edge of what we call day-to-day existence and it can be an "interesting" experience to go to a few of them. Note, I did not say a "nice" experience. Nice or not nice is not the point.The point is that you get to KNOW WHY we exist the way we do and act the way we do in this "mortal guise" because it is a bit different I can tell you out on the edge of where material form crosses over into, well let's call it "spiritual" form. The problem is not so much that of having been there, but how to handle coming BACK from there. In many ways, painful though it may be, you really would refer to be "there", because it is like a magnet. Just as many UFO abduction survivors hanker after another meeting, despite the fact that it is often a painful experience; so it is, that having been to the edge of material form and seeing what the potential is, it is hard to come back and "hang around" in a form that is largely useless except for the purpose of laying a foundation for those yet to experience it. However, just like UFO abductees, the fact that I can explain it, doesn't mean I can do it in a way that you can understand it. To quote a WWII fighter pilot (about combat) "If you haven't been there you can't know it, and if you've been there you can't explain it...........
The outcome, in many ways, accelerated "S O L V I S T A" which moves at an energy rate and pace far in excess of the slower energy of the traditional science Fiction and fantasy work I have done and still create, but "S O L V I S T A" is very concerned with what is right in our face, but beyond where we will look. You DON'T "SEE" in normal mode because this is not a "seeing" thing, this is a "feeling" or experiencing thing. I mean, now I understand what a Shaman is really doing.
Put it like this - if your physics teacher gives you a class on electricity you say "now I know about electricity". Whereas I guarantee you, if you stick your finger (especially if it is a moist finger) in a live wall socket, that you UNDERSTAND about electricity!
Or, it is like the Bowie-acted character in "The Man Who Fell to Earth" when he says "The trouble with television is that it shows you everything and tells you nothing".
It's like that. You can read a book about what happens to people when they survive an alien abduction, a distortion of their normal day-to-day human experience. However, it is only when YOU are abducted and pass through the edge of known human experience too-date, that you really appreciate what lies "beyond the edge".
It blurs your focus to begin with, and then it gets sharper than ever before in every way...........
More, some other time .....................
best,
Peter Andrew Jones
mailto:solvista@btinternet.com
3. FAQs DECODING & VIEWING PICTURES
This newsletter is sent with image files in base64 format. Save the image files into a chosen directory.PC platform >
Ideal image viewers are LView-Pro or Paint-Shop pro both of which are available as shareware on many CD samplers or you can use a search engine to obtain these applications as shareware off the net. We recommend LView Pro as an ideal application for viewing images especially using the multiple open/slideshow/cycle slides option.
MAC platform > Graphic Converter is good (also having a slide-show facility) or JPEG view and is available as shareware on various Cd Roms, and of course Photoshop, Live Picture or similar paint-programs will be OK. You should also be able to view the pictures through a web- browser.
4. VISIONS BEYOND THE OBVIOUS
(Interview with Peter Andrew Jones in WARP MAGAZINE - Holland)
Warp ~ So, tell me about SOLVISTA?
PJ ~ I began to be interested in what the computer could really achieve, with an emphasis on how it might extend existing creative methods whilst enabling a seamless join between what can be created with organic media and what is best suited to digital media.
Warp ~ Why the name SOLVISTA and what does that mean for SOLAR WIND, the latter being a name synonymous with your work for so many years?
PJ ~ I like to think that SOLAR WIND was always at the forefront of what was happening in SF, Fantasy and related Art areas, certainly that was always my interest. More recently I think of the name as referring to my hard core SF/F, the work I did, and still do, in those genres specifically. SOLAR WIND will always be "SF/F".
However: There are many areas that, whilst not SF/F, have their roots in those genres, software games perhaps being a good example (remember Space Invaders?). What might we call this range of visual areas that are like SF but not strictly SF? This began to extend my organic ways of working and my way of thinking.
Once digital workstations came down to the regular studio level (I had worked on Graphic Paintbox many years ago) then the whole visual creative platform just exploded with possibilities even though there is no really accurate name for this new way of creating things. Electronic imaging is a term that doesn't, for me, describe it very well if one is thinking of the creative aspect of it, and does not encompass the future of, say, created organisms, entities and vistas. So I got to thinking of my own (terminology that is).
SUN = SOL
SOLAR WIND was/is "a stream of charged particles given off by the sun." I started to have "daydreams" in my mind as to where I might now travel, not just with tecnho but with techno that had its roots in organic, eg: a painter's vision and a designer's eye. Also, my "near death" (NDE) experience got me looking at "inner space" as much as outer space and different levels of existence.
Visions, views, visual ideas = VISTA. So I guess it became SOL(vistas) = a wider cosmic view, more the whole cosmos rather than just galaxy level or solar system level.
Warp ~ And right now?
PJ ~ The new media has at last begun to come within range of where my creativity has always been. I now can at least take the Starship to the edge of the known Cosmos and into the edge of the unexplored.......
Warp ~ Are you saying you're making movies?
PJ ~ I'm saying my work syncs-up with *all* the new media. It goes "everywhere all at once regardless" as both a philosophy and an end-user reality. It means that SOLAR WIND's stance of "Maximum Imagination" has become "Visions beyond the obvious". This is just a natural progression for me. I've done most if not all media, for example, when colour separated overlay technique first hit tv in a big workable way ("Blue screen") I was a major user of it in tv work. It was a very new technique at the high end of tv design. Digital is just (for me) an extension of those ways of working, except that instead of a multiplane camera we have layers in a visual editing application.
For example, the Quick time format will go digital tv compatible so what I did in cso/multiplane goes digital. I suppose this sums up SOLVISTA - it utilises all new media but does not shun "traditional"(organic) media. There are many examples - for instance I recently hand painted in oil paint three large 3d globes of the Earth for the BBC/ Disney program "Global Sunrise" - not something you can do with a computer easily!
Organic is still great for many, many things and possibly always will be(?) and digital is great for some other things. What media it is is of no real interest to me, I am more concerned with what I am trying to create, not what I am creating it with. I do get very excited about the seamless transition concept and it is not to say that I don't get pleasure from the application of oil paint, I which I most certainly do, or the "feel" of the pigments between the fingers, or the magic of tempering them with egg or glue, or mixing a batch of oil paint and tubing it up. It all has its place.
Warp ~ So, how do you feel about much of the digital work you see around and all the "techno talk" that accompanies it?
PJ ~ Hmmnnn..... Well, my observation is that you can take a fattened pig to market but just make sure it's not wheat and barley day when you arrive.
Warp ~ Pardon?
PJ ~ Software is becoming more intuitive by the week and there is strong development of intuitive interfaces and that painter's eye (depth, tone, color, recession etc etc) is working through to the digital interface. It's taken over a quarter of a century for the techno to even remotely catch up with where my creativity's always been, now that it's (kind of) here, the serious fun can at least start. But; it don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing (do-wah, do-wah, do-wah.............)
Warp ~ I'm not sure I understand?
PJ ~ The cosmos (between the ears....) is a BIG place with any luck. A computer screen is a flat piece of transparency bombarded with light. One has infinite possibilities - NOW; the other has two dimensions posing as three. When a tantric gains enlightenment and turns around, the entirety of the cosmos rushes towards him........
Warp ~ Is it not also written (joke!) that "if he has not gained true enlightenment he will not transcend but be crushed by all that is the power of creation" or something like that?"
PJ ~ Unleashing the ultimate has far-reaching ramifications.
Warp ~ And?
PJ ~ I dare say, before I die, a designed creation of mine will get out of the techno-gloop and shake hands with me (or strangle me perhaps).
Warp ~ This is Science Fiction!
PJ ~ It's all in the mind and always has been. The techno of the day merely "makes it so". The more it does the more it is. Currently, oil paint is illuminated, turned into binary code, wired and decoded. It visits your computer moments after it left my brush. How can you doubt it will, eventually, climb out of your techno device, whatever it may then be called, and greet you in a way you so ordered.
Warp ~ Techno Alchemy?
PJ - Visions beyond the obvious!
till next 'ish..........
PAJ Peter Andrew Jones.
solvista@btinternet.com
5. OTHER PUBLICATIONS
We hope you enjoy this special introductory issue of S O L V I S T A which is an abridged monthly version of the quarterly CD magazine of the IMAGINATIVE WORKS from the studio of the Artist Peter Andrew Jones.
If you would like to try our other monthly publications you can see an overview of other images/newsletters available on our main web page at http://www.btinternet.com/~solvista/solvista.html
or subscribe as follows > PAINTED EAGLE - The Art of Historical Aviation. <mailto:solvista@btinternet.com> placing the words "subscribe PAINTED EAGLE from SOLnews" in the SUBJECT LINE
PORTRETO - Realistic traditional art of wide subject matter. <mailto:solvista@btinternet.com> placing the words "subscribe PORTRETO from SOLnews" in the SUBJECT LINE
6. CREDITS
S O L V I S T A e-mail abridged edition - ISSN 1462-3676 Published by SOLVISTA PRESS
(c)1998 Copyright PETER ANDREW JONES in the Artworks and (c)1998 Copyright S O L V I S T A in the e-zine publication in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and patents Act 1988 under English Law, The Berne Copyright Convention and all other applicable Copyright Laws and Conventions world- wide including North America.
The moral right of Peter Andrew Jones to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted by him.
NO part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form.
This newsletter may be retransmitted in its entirety without payment. It is however prohibited to copy only part of the newsletter or to use any part or the whole newsletter for gain without the prior written consent of the copyright owner.
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