Digital Childhood 001/002
Unique Giclée prints (1/1), Gallery Etching Rag
6th October 2024
Digital Childhood 001/002 marked a new chapter in my artistic journy, the moment my imagery transitioned from the wall and studio to the realm of fine art printing. It was also my first commissioned work for a public figure, a renowned educational voice based in Los Angeles, which made the process all the more meaningful. These two pieces, printed as unique 1/1 Giclées on Gallery Etching Rag, brought together everything I had been developing over the years: the formal clarity of my street language, the moral urgency of my message and the technical refinement of a collector’s edition.
The two portraits, a boy and a girl, are conceived as companions, reflections of one another, separate yet inseparable. Each child stands isolated against a field of deep violet, their forms sharply defined in black and white, their eyes obscured by a bar of luminous colour that matches the glow of the device they hold. In 001, a vivid green; in 002, an intense blue. The pairing of those tones was intentional. I wanted them to speak to both attraction and toxicity, the light that seduces and the light that blinds. The purple background, meanwhile, creates a psychological field: regal and artificial, it evokes both the aesthetic allure of digital culture and the quiet melancholy it conceals.
The choice of Gallery Etching Rag as a support was crucial. Its tactile, matte surface absorbs the ink differently from wall or canvas, it gives the figures a presence that feels almost carved out of the paper. The result is both intimate and monumental. These were works where texture, tone and pigment aligned perfectly with the emotional architecture of the image. Holding them felt like holding the distilled essence of what my work had been striving for, a language that is graphic yet poetic, confrontational yet deeply human.
The title, Digital Childhood, encapsulates both the subject and the tragedy of our time: a generation raised under the glow of screens, where childhood itself becomes data, measured, observed, sold and archived. Numbering the prints 001 and 002 was my way of suggesting the beginning of a series, but also of underlining their individuality. Each print is unique; each represents a different face of the same condition. Together, they stand as quiet witnesses to the loss of presence that has come to define our age.
Signing them was an unexpectedly emotional moment. I had painted and sprayed on countless walls, but committing my name to paper in the company of someone who shared my concern for education and childhood, gave this work another kind of weight. It was not just an artwork being completed, it was a statement about belief: that art can move, teach and restore awareness in a world that is losing its attention.
Digital Childhood 001/002 represents, to me, the synthesis of everything I aim for, precision of form, honesty of message and emotional resonance. These prints are not reproductions; they are original voices, each speaking to the same truth: that the glow we mistake for connection may, in fact, be the very light by which innocence disappears.