Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery is extremely pleased to announce that Skottie O’Mahony has been named as the Gallery’s new featured artist and he will now be promoted by the gallery for the next 14 days in the gallery’s Artist Showcase.

Skottie is an award-winning artist based in Texas, USA. Skottie was selected as 1 of the top twelve finalists in the gallery’s 18th Solo Art Exhibition Series. The placement in this competition qualified his art to be showcased in this feature.

Skottie’s Artist Showcase feature will be promoted to over 350+ major news outlets, with inclusion on Google News & Bing News. In addition, the gallery will also be featuring and promoting his artwork in the gallery’s various social media networks for further exposure.

Below are Skottie’s Artist Biography, Artist Statement and 5 images that were submitted to this competition.

Artist Biography

Skottie has always loved art, nature, and connecting with people. He has had a long, successful career in design and art direction for the publishing and tech industries. Several years ago, he designed his home and botanical gardens in Austin, Texas, known as Tanglewild Gardens, where he hybridizes daylilies with his husband, and pursues his digital art. He is inspired by texture, color and form — a fallen seed, small creature, or a striking individual may serve as his muse, and he takes photographs of that muse to be used as a base for his artwork.

More recently, Skottie has started to explore AI (Artificial Intelligence) as a way to explore new directions in his work, and currently creates his own muses. He still uses photographs of individuals who do exist, but through AI, he digitally “hybridizes” new people to act as the subjects in his portraiture.

Manipulating those photos digitally, Skottie transforms them into something that evokes a poignant response, awakens the viewer's imagination, or inspires them. His art has qualities, as well as integrated elements, that give a nod to his more traditional art background of painting, encaustic, pastel, etching, etc. Some older works of his are used for textural elements, digitally as filters or for layering, and as a way to add depth to an otherwise two dimensional work. This synergy of techniques makes his work unique, emotional and thought provoking.

Skottie is an emerging artist and has already been recognized in both regional and global art shows. He has also donated work for fundraising art auctions for non-profits and has done commissioned works for collectors. In January of this year, Skottie was recognized as a “Change-Maker” by VoyageAustin Magazine and profiled as one of their “Stories That Inspire”, for his career journey and digital artwork.

He has worked on several collaborative pieces with other emerging artists across the globe, and is often inspired by current events and his sympathetic reaction to xenophobia, bigotry and injustice. Being an out and proud gay man, he has experienced prejudice, bullying, and worse in his life, and tends to bond with the misfits of our world. He has spent a lifetime working with diversity, equity and inclusion-related causes and non-profits, and that exposure to those marginalized in society, is evident is his work. There are complex stories behind many of his portrait subjects, many of whom have been stigmatized, disenfranchised, or suffered great abuse or pain at one time or another, and there are haunting echoes of those hardships perceptible in their portraits.

Artist Statement

I’m inspired by the natural world and drawn to unusual and different textures, colors and forms. I might happen upon a spent blossom, a creepy insect, or a striking person that serves as my muse, but I always find a seed of beauty in whatever it might be. I’m driven to capture what drew my attention in an image and share what others, may have overlooked, but I was privileged to notice. 

These images serve as the basis for my work. I push my images digitally to generate something that goes far beyond what initially drew me in, but still retains its essence. More recently I have been exploring artificial intelligence as a way to not only enhance my work, but to create worlds, structures, and people that previously may have only existed in the imagination or dreams.

Through the use of filtering, image layering and digital manipulation, my work transforms a simple image into the unexpected and often lends itself to pareidolia, or the human ability to see shapes or make pictures out of randomness. Think of a Rorschach inkblot, but with color, texture, depth and emotion.

The digital aspect of my work allows me to reproduce the final image on a number of mediums to texturally enhance the work even further, including metal, canvas, wood, archival paper and even glass.

My goal is to create that which has never existed, but with roots in nature; something that evokes a poignant or personal response, makes a statement, that awakens the viewer’s imagination and, if I’m lucky, inspires them.

Skottie’s website is www.skotoart.com.