Digital Art

Mario Castillo's move towards Digital Imaging started when he took a workshop at Columbia College in the early 1990's. He was immediately drawn into the "magic" of the new tools. Working with Adobe Photoshop, he was captivated as to how easily he could "paint" over his drawings. Castillo's fascination with this medium has increased through the years.

Before his involvement with computers, the heavy duty layering found in some of Mario Castillo's Perceptualist work prompted people to ask what software program he was using to create all of these effects. After working with Photoshop layers, he realized the potential, inherent in the software program to help him realize his layered compositions.

As a result of this, Mario Castillo plans to make use of this facility to engage in even more complex layering. His digital creations from 1993 through 2007 do not make heavy use of layers the way he did in Perceptualist works but new works are being planned.

All of Castillo's early digital art work has been created with the aid of previously done paintings. He starts out with a photograph of one of his artworks and then he begins to analyze it and dissect it, selecting segments from here and there, layering these fragments into new arrangements to finally arrive at a totally different piece.

When computer art was in its infancy, the works that Mario Castillo saw in the early 1970's were not that impressive at all. Except for the films of John Whitney, Michael Whitney, James Whitney, and Jon Stehura, most computer art on paper looked very flat, lifeless and mechanical. It was this first encounter with art and technology which made him believe that nothing significant (as far as the visual arts go) could be produced with the computer. With all of the tremendous advancements in Digital Imaging, Castillo is now a true believer that an artist can employ a computer just as if it were an artist's brush and create fantastic works with this medium.

As the computer has revolutionized all aspects of contemporary society, the Visual Arts have not been spared, and Castillo now is certain that in the near future, there are greater changes to be seen.