Reilly Stroope: Let's Get Digital

“We have art in order not to die of the truth.”
(Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900)

Artists, whether they know it or not, perform a crucial social function. They help keep the rest of us sane, reminding us that all is not dreary and desperate, saving us from the poisonous nightly news by offering up the antidotes of wonder, beauty, escape — and whimsy.

Oh, how we need whimsy in this new Age of Empire with its Clash of Civilizations. (So that’s where all the noise is coming from!)

Even confrontational art — plays by Clifford Odets, paintings by Pablo Picasso, music by Frank Zappa — can deliver us from evil, too, sometimes by rendering it raw and detestable, sometimes by revealing its fundamental banality. Painters, musicians, writers, illustrators, and myriad other artists are the true therapists. They are the chroniclers.

They are mirrors.

They are all necessary, too, but perhaps now more than ever it is the fun-house mirror in which we need to seek our reflections. Reilly Stroope is a computer artist, a “digital illustrator” whose casually quirky, classically modern creations hover like light bulbs and question marks over our heads. They’re not so lightweight that they’ll float away, nor are they so heavy that they’ll drop — bonk! — on our heads.

Reilly is easy to talk to and remarkably self-assured, and at “almost 20” will be a junior this fall at the University of Texas, Arlington (UTA). Mom’s a painter, Dad’s a realtor, so Reilly’s genes suggest he’ll be an artist with a roof over his head. His genes probably also explain why he’s sure about where he wants to go, and how to get there.

“School’s great,” says Reilly, “because I’m seeing things I wouldn’t otherwise. It’s a chance to find new things.” He knows that “art” is the vision in his head plus the effect on the viewer, not the work itself.

And he knows that it’s “craft” that bridges that gap.

“It’s all about learning the tools of the trade,” Reilly continues. “If I didn’t go to school, I wouldn’t reach my potential. When I look at my artwork from high school, it’s changed so dramatically now it’s not even funny.”

Actually, Reilly Stroope is funny. His talking X-acto knives, loopy-legged masked nightstalkers, and other American post-primitive digital delights always elicit at least a half-smile, if not a “Whoa!” Every illustration tells the viewer that Reilly is enjoying himself immensely.

It would be rude not to join him in the fun.

It’s easy to understand Reilly’s regard for Picasso, as the young man’s work is heavily indebted to the Spaniard, and Cubists in general. The shapes are simple but poised, and Reilly describes the world with a purposefully limited vocabulary. French art historian Nicholas Pioch says the Cubists “chose to break down the subjects they were painting [into] geometrical forms using subdued colors...”

Yep, that’s Reilly.

Pablo might have liked Reilly’s work, but he wouldn’t have recognized the young man’s brush or canvas, since Reilly is using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop on a PC. The Macintosh is the putative “artist’s computer,” but Reilly is “a PC fan,” though he clearly understands that pens, paints, and software are merely tools; they don’t create anything.

When queried about whether his visions come with colors spec’d, Reilly replies that “everything I sketch is black and white. I get ideas, write them down, then work with them. I might scan in a basic drawing, or do it from scratch [on the computer]. Either way,” Reilly admits, “I will play with the colors, and might change them a thousand times.”

Some art critics have dissed the new wave of digital artists as being ignorant of color, of not knowing their computer and output systems (imagesetters, color inkjets, even monitors) well enough to control the color from concept through finished product. “I figure I’ll just have to deal with the color shift on things,” Reilly shrugs.

The notoriously picky Oddica chose one of Reilly’s illustrations for a t-shirt. “On the Oddica shirt,” says Reilly, “the color I had on the screen was more brownish, but when I got the shirt in the mail it had a greenish tint. It wasn’t a dramatic change. No one else noticed, but I did.”

Reilly still has at least two more years of college and a lifetime of art and craft ahead of him, plenty of time to learn how to calibrate his “device chain” for the right color spaces and profiles. Many painters through the ages were so picky about color that they made their own paints; as Reilly’s visions become ever clearer, he will learn to get the color in his mind into and out of his computer.

The life of Reilly is sketching and digitizing every day, working through the summer as a valet, and “doing as many side projects” as he can. He stays busy without being frantic about it, bulking up the portfolio, cranking out the work, and staying virtually connected to “as many [online artist] communities as possible.”

He has his own site, of course, ReillyStroope.com, and PixelgirlPresents offers one of his illustrations as downloadable wallpaper. He has photo/art collaborations posted at Flickr and a small gallery at 5oup, an “online creative student community”; he is profiled at IllustrationMundo; and his fanciful footsteps traverse the Metafilter community weblog as well as the variously bodacious and Bohemian Web sites Artdorks, Slackdaddy, Designiskinky, Technorati, Del.icio.us, Elektronaut, and YayHooray, his current fave.

Through fans, friends, social site networking, and word of mouth, Reilly is all over the Internet. If you search with Google for Reilly Stroope (in quotes), you will get over 500 other hits besides the ones above. Start surfing and you won’t come out of the water for hours.

But when you do, remember: “We have art in order not to die of the truth.” So take your Recommended Daily Allowance of art, however you like it, with a few doses of Reilly Stroope for good measure.

Published in the August 2006 issue of Aesthetic Refuge arts magazine/website.