Gail T. South
Gail South has been involved with art for her whole life. Both of her parents were professional artists, and her earliest memories are of her father painting in his studio. She studied photography, sculpture and painting and then, during a career at IBM, became involved with the world of digital art.
Back in the early eighties, Photoshop, and, in its early life, Photostyler, were new software programs just being discovered by serious artists. Since that time the depth and complexity of possibilities of digital art have increased dramatically. Gail uses Photoshop and its “plug-ins” to allow her imagination free rein.
She creates work in two major fields: digital modification of photographs and pure fantasy digital painting. Both involve mastery of the tools, a skill Gail says she says she continues to learn every day. Both also involve “layering” of images, sometimes employing upwards of forty layers in a single work which can take a week or longer to create.
From a lifetime of taking photographs, Gail selects those “special” ones and works to give them a “painterly” feel, sometimes employing several shots in a single work. The fantasy works began as illustrations for a children’s book, At the Magic Pond*, and expanded into a new genre. One of the main tools for these pictures is the use of fractals, (geometric objects which can be divided into parts, each of which is similar to the original object and possesses infinite detail), which give unending possibilities for exploration, discovery, and exploitation.
All the works are printed on an Epson 2000P printer with archival inks designed to last for more than one hundred years. Gail then laminates the art in UV-protected plastic and signs, numbers, mats and frames them in limited edition runs.
Gail and her husband, Jerry, after retiring from careers at IBM and Penn State University respectively, bought and ran a seaside motel on Long Beach Island, NJ for fourteen years before retiring permanently in 2004. They have two children and two, soon to be three, grandchildren. They split their time between New Jersey and Pine Island/Cayo Costa, Florida. Gail has exhibited at various galleries, most recently at Gallery 106 in Beach Haven, NJ and at Julia’s Arts in Matlacha, FL.
*available at www.lulu.com