Welcome to Visual Hierarchy, an online visual playground. Gathered here are pictures I make. Visual Hierarchy is a laboratory. Research is done in a wide variety of mediums.

I Like Music by Stuart McMillen

Posted: January 22nd, 2010 | Author: Sean | Filed under: Artists | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

I found Stuart’s cartoon to be very powerful. Cartoons sometimes humor me, sometimes they amaze me in their artistic craftsmanship and creativity. Some cartoons however actually move my soul. This is is one of those: Click on the image

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Alex Chaney – Geometrics, Space, and Narrative

Posted: November 21st, 2009 | Author: Sean | Filed under: Artists | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

If I were a fish and you wanted to catch and eat me you would cast a line with some figure-ground relationships, spacial definitions, or some sort of perspective on a hook and wait 5 seconds.  When I first saw Alex’s work a year ago I was a bit unsettled by the flat spaces, intense geometry, and mass of figures intertwined in narrative.

Today his work appeals to me for several reasons.  I’ve had the privilege of seeing a sizable amount of his work (we are the same major) and am struck by the consistency of his style, his complex figure relationships, and his ability to combine flat geometric shapes with a variety of spaces/environments.  To me these three elements in his work make his images continuously captivating every time I look at them.  Below are some of my favorite works by Alex:

1_Alex_Chaney




39_Alex_Chaney




38_Alex_Chaney




36_Alex_Chaney




31_Alex_Chaney




25_Alex_Chaney




16_Alex_Chaney




14_Alex_Chaney




12_Alex_Chaney




3_Alex_Chaney

Also, Alex and I did an art trade several months ago, which you can find the results of here.

Here is a link to Alex’s Facebook.

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Battle Ready and Ready for Love

Posted: June 8th, 2009 | Author: Sean | Filed under: Finished Works, Sketches, Thoughts | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

A constant struggle in the way I think about what I make is the sometimes disturbing content.  I love drawing war.  War is horrible.  Sometimes I’m horrified by what I draw.  Its great in that it shows some of my drawings have spice, but what about the way I want people to see me.

A video game I just bought called Total War: Medieval II is amazing.  In between loading pages and brutal battles are quotes.  One of them reads  to the equivilent of: “Those who love war have never experienced it.”  Thats me, I draw it, I think about it, I play video games of it, but I have never tried it.  I don’t want to try it.  War is disgusting, unneccissary, and depressing.  I can’t take real war, I can take it fake.  I love fantasy and sci-fi war artwork and entertainment.

Lately I’ve been juxtaposing my war drawings with my naturalistic drawings to balance out the copious amounts of graphite bloodshed.  I want to spread feelings of compassion and love with my work.  Mixing it up a little bit more as far as content is something I look forward to.

Some recent drawings:

violent-narrative_small

archer

axeman

foot-soldier

on-the-bench-landscape

patrolman

spearman-leaning

parting-the-grass_small

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War and Peace, Compassion, and Hate

Posted: October 31st, 2008 | Author: Sean | Filed under: Artists, Thoughts | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

lamoursmallMany of my ideas and thoughts as a person revolve around war. Ever since I was a kid I drew battle scenes of all types. Gun fights, sword duels, and epic military clashes. In the past year or so, however, a new branch of thought has arisen. Compassion, love, peace. I have always detested war and the suffering it brings, but I have always known how to depict it. Compassion, love, and peace are things that are artistically unfamiliar to me. The image above was an attempt to create the emotion of exhilarating joy. While there is some of that, also present is a sad nostalgia. How one controls the personality of an image is a skill I wish to develop further.

This group of artists, especially Elay, hit the nail on the head. Elay’s texts relate to my desire to promote compassion and love. These concepts are quite underdeveloped in my mind, but in general this is a direction I’d like my work to go in. If I could figure out an effective way to translate Elay’s ideas into my own… Perhaps I should become a street artist.842231224109937

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