Charline Lancel is a Brussels based visual artist producing digital Op Art pieces that are currently printed on Aluminium panels using the ChromaLuxe sublimation technique. Under sublimation, the image is not printed on the surface of the panel but instead after intense heating actually becomes part of the image. The use of aluminium suits Charline’s work perfectly as her compositions often have a fluid molten metallic kind of feel to them.

Did you study art? If so, where?

I graduated from the IATA (Technical Arts and Crafts Institute of Namur, in Belgium) school in the Transition Art section. I also hold a degree as a primary school teacher – something that has influenced me to make my artistic work playful and colorful. By and large, I am self-taught, learning new digital technologies (Photoshop, etc.) as they come up.

Why do you like Op Art?

I am intrigued and fascinated by optical illusions. I always loved maths and geometry ; I am very interested in Fibonacci’s numbers and the golden ratio. I particularly love spheres which to me evoke the planets, and give me the feeling that I am connected with the cosmos.

Which Op Artists have particularly inspired you?

I am often told that my visual universe resembles the works of Vasarely, but I must stress the fact that I was not aware of his work when I created my first abstract visuals in 2007. I did, however, write my senior thesis about geometry and the works of Piet Mondrian. I like Mondrian’s approach which strives toward minimalism of abstraction. His researches and his study of vertical and horizontal lines have inspired a part of my own work.

How do you make your art? (computer -> what software? traditional painting -> what materials, how do you plan a piece etc)

I take pictures from everyday life with a simple Cyber-shot Sony camera p200. This makes my basic image matrical and not vectorial. I then process and transform these pictures through Photoshop, working on a MacBook Pro.

What’s the process for making one of your artworks?

I make juxtapositions ; I apply vertical and horizontal symmetry to my images ; I use all the possible resources offered by Photoshop.

Any other art you like and other artists that inspire or have inspired you.

I love the set designs from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the universe of Vadim’s Barbarella as well as the universes of Verner Panton, Eams, Pierre Cardin, Courrèges, and the works of Anish Kapoor, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Curtis Jere, Henk van Putten, Alexander Calder, Isamu Noguchi, Pierre Rulens, Matthew Divito, Zanis Waldheim, SimonCPage, natacha Caland, Jérôme Jasinski…

What do you like outside of art ?

I love walks in nature, as well as the atmosphere, fashion and music of the late 60s and 70s.

How would you like to progress your artwork in the future ?

I would like to find financial means to create lenticular imprints, in order to give movement to my images.

I would also like to meet other artists who do matrical digital op art. Most abstract and geometric visuals which come under the general banner of ‘Digital Op Art’ are vectorial images.

I am currently seeking a gallery space specialized in ‘Digital Op Art’ which would agree to host my work and exhibit my pictures imprinted on Chromaluxe (and, possibly, on lenticular supports).

You can see much more of Charline’s original and interesting work on her website.

David Buckden is an artist living and working in the UK who produces vibrant abstract geometric art.

Originally a painter, in the late 1960s David gave up painting and instead concentrated on installations and film-making as this was very much the fashionable thing to do at the time. It wasn’t until 1999 that he returned to painting. Since then he has created 13 series of paintings. Starting originally with a Pop Art series, his work has gradually evolved into purely abstract, geometric art. The scientific aspects of visual perception – particularly that concerned with geometry, pattern and colour – have become fundamental to David’s work.

Did you study art?

Yes – I took Fine Art at Harrow School of Art and at Nottingham College of Art, graduating with the Dip AD degree in 1971.

Why do you like Op Art?

I strive to create images which have a kinetic existence in the viewer’s perception; the ability of Op Art to interact with and interfere with our mechanisms of visual perception is something that fascinates me. My recent series of paintings have been primarily concerned with:

– Relative degrees of symmetry – e.g. symmetrical structure, but with irregular components
– Harmonies and dissonance of colour
– Patterns which can be ‘assembled’ in the eye to form large, emblematic shapes
– The role and reality (or otherwise) of after-images

How do you make your art?

I paint in acrylic, using tape to achieve clean hard edges. Each work is fully pre-planned both for form and colour.

Who has inspired you?

As a practising painter I acknowledge many influences, from the very literary – Kitaj for example – to the makers of purely visual, self-contained experiences such as Rothko. My own work in more recent times has been of the latter type, but its major influencer was at work on my senses as an art student way back in the Sixties – the incomparable Bridget Riley.

Think ‘Op’ and you surely must immediately also think ‘Riley’. However, I’m also very mindful of Bridget’s own scepticism about the application of the Op tag to work within the Sixties ‘fad’, wherein the style was used indiscriminately in popular design/decor/clothing. What you see in Bridget’s work is something far more significant than trick optical effects. And it’s a body of work which hardly any artist has ever rivalled, in terms of its sheer scale, range and continuing development.

Paul Moorhouse has summed things up very succinctly: Riley’s paintings exist on their own terms. Each work has its own character and each is self contained in the sense that, like a piece of music, its structure arises from purely internal formal or expressive considerations generated by the relationships between its component parts.

Recent exhibitions include:

2011 Patterned Beetroot Tree Gallery, Derby

2008/09/10 Canterbury Art Fair UCA, Canterbury

2008 Location Quay Arts, Newport, Isle of Wight

2007 LM Open Finalists The Gallery, Cork Street, London

2007 United Artists Cottons Centre, London

2006 Headturner IOTA, Ramsgate

2006 Under the Influence IOTA, Ramsgate

2005 Images in the City Geffrye Museum, London

2004 Recent Paintings Oregano, Deal

2004 Recent Paintings Fuse Gallery, Sandwich