In the 1940s, painter Lee Mullican began to receive acclaim for his layered abstractions. Upon returning from service in World War II, where he served as a cartographer and graphic artist, Mullican developed a technique of using a printer's knife to create three-dimensional ridges of oil paint atop a flat painted ground; he referred to these marks as striations. Through the implementation of this striation technique, Mullican created captivating works that exude depth and energy.

Inspired by ancient and ritualistic art, Mullican's practice centered on pursuing art as a meditative and spiritual practice. Themes of creation and cosmological exploration are present in Mullican's paintings, drawings, and sculptures throughout his over fifty-year career. Mullican's work often grapples between diametric themes of abstraction and representation, the planned and the automatic, and contemplation and humor.

MUT-3-2.TGA, exemplifies Mullican's adaption of the themes and styles of his physical work to the digital art he began to create in 1986. Vibrant color orbits a central ellipse while smaller circles and lines resemble constellations in motion on a dark striated substrate. The heliocentric nature of the composition rivals its perceived personage, similar to Mullican's GUARDIAN series of the 1970s and 80s, which depicted mystical linear figures on black backgrounds.

"I found that beyond what one thought, the computer as being hard-lined, analytical, and predictable, it was indeed a medium fueled with the automatic, enabled by chance, and accident, discovery of new ways of making imagery."– Lee Mullican

EXPANDED.ART'S PIONEER GRAILS is a series of 72-HOUR OPEN NFT EDITIONS presenting paradigmatic artworks from key figures in the history of digital art.

Edition 50 / Open Edition

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