THE ARTWORK OF
ROGER ALLAN CLEAVES
For the past three years I have participated in Inktober and 2016 was my most focused experience with this annual celebration of drawing. This year my studio practice has been an intentional collision of ideas that pursue new media art forms, traditional drawing, and databending –also known as glitch art. All of these pursuits tie in to my career long investigation of methods in abstract figuration. The drawings featured on these pages are pen and ink drawings that I scanned and painted digitally. They are portraits of imagined characters created by combining shapes, facial features, and abstracted symbols. My goal each day was to expand my own inventiveness and push the threshold of my creativity. My studio practice excels when I’m exploring the unknown possibilities rather than wading in the shallow waters of security. With that stated, things got a little bit weird, but I’ve always gravitated towards art that was challenging in its relationship to the viewer. As each day passed the drawings became more abstract and in a lot of ways more simplified. Towards the end of the book I will share a few of glitches I created using various software. I plan to continue making these portraits in the near future, but these drawings are the beginning of a body of work. I hope you enjoy the work and you can view a larger chronicle of my work on my website which you should all Facebook like and share with your friends. Thank you very much for your interest in my work and your support. Sincerely, Roger Allan Cleaves www.rogerallancleaves.com