Visual Effects

I create abstract fine art using 3D computer graphics. In addition, I’m a visual effects supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks. Over the years, my fine art and my visual effects work have informed, inspired and enabled each other immensely. I've applied techniques I developed for my fine art to my visual effects work and re-purposed realistic effects techniques for my fine art. As a result, I've developed a creative process that integrates intuition and intellect, deliberate design and random happenstance, realism and abstraction and traditional art and technology.

My fine art is an exploration of the sublime beauty of infinity, complexity, perception, reality and consciousness. I have a passionate fascination with the powerful dreams and visions that inspire me. I find inspiration in nature, science, math, art, technology and all manner of things. I find that inspiration is more a way of perceiving than a characteristic of things.

I'm always seeking greater control and more creative utilization of the infinite possibilities that computers afford me. Through the design and creation of more and more sophisticated tools and techniques I hope to find ever more powerful ways to awaken the unconscious imagination and inspire experiences of awe and mystery. My dream is to create living art that makes art itself.

In the eighties I was working as a traditional painter, sculptor and animator for visual effects in the film industry when I began to experiment with making my fine art on computers. I saw the potential for making the art I¹d always dreamed of, but I also saw the potential for application in the film industry. Some ridiculed my computer art passion, but soon, I was in the right place at the right time and got to help pioneer the use of computer graphics for visual effects. In 1998, I received the Academy Award® for best visual effects for my work on WHAT DREAMS MAY COME.

What I like best about computer technology is the ability to create realistic representations of anything I can imagine and an infinitude of things I haven't imagined.

Art

Kevin Mack uses a laptop powered by  

Intel® Core™2 Duo processor