Tag: Digital painting

ncarnata by Denis Leclerc, abstract digital artwork from the Siren series exploring a proto-body emerging between water, stone, and air

Incarnata

Posted on | by Denis

Incarnata marks a threshold within my ongoing exploration of sirens. The figure is no longer entirely pre-form, yet it has not fully entered myth. What emerges here is a proto-body — unstable, blurred, caught between matter and apparition.

Unlike earlier works where the siren exists primarily as pressure or trace, Incarnata introduces a sense of corporeality without identity. The form is neither male nor female, neither human nor creature. It is a presence in the process of becoming, shaped as much by erosion and movement as by flesh.

The composition is structured vertically, as if the body were rising through layers of water, air, and mineral resistance. Edges dissolve, contours refuse to settle. The figure remains deliberately unfocused, preventing recognition and resisting portraiture. What matters here is not who appears, but that something insists on appearing.

Color and texture function as agents of transformation. Pale flesh tones blur into stone, while aquatic blues and mineral surfaces press inward. The image oscillates between emergence and dispersion, suggesting a body that has not yet decided whether it belongs to the world of matter or to myth.

Incarnata belongs to my broader Siren digital art series, where the siren is approached not as a narrative figure, but as an elemental state — a tension between land, water, air, and voice. Here, incarnation is incomplete, fragile, and provisional.

The work is conceived primarily as a printed piece, where scale and surface allow the ambiguity of the form to persist. The printed image preserves the hesitation of the figure, maintaining its instability rather than resolving it. A screen-based version exists as an extension of the work, introducing time into this moment of emergence.

Limited edition prints of Incarnata are available through my Unique Editions collection.

You can also view my work on Singulart
.

Red Tide by Denis Leclerc, abstract digital artwork from the Siren series exploring rising pressure, geological textures, and mineral tones

Red Tide

Posted on | by Denis

Red Tide

Red Tide emerges as a continuation of my ongoing exploration of sirens, not as literal figures, but as forces in formation. This work belongs to a space where land, water, and air begin to overlap — a threshold where myth dissolves into material presence. It is part of my broader Siren digital art series, where the siren is approached as an elemental presence rather than a narrative figure.

Rather than depicting a body, I approached Red Tide as a rising pressure. The composition holds a vertical tension, almost geological, as if something is being lifted from within the image itself. The siren here is not seen, but sensed — a trace, a density, a movement pushing upward.

The surface plays a central role. Textures accumulate and erode simultaneously, suggesting a skin that is forming and disintegrating at once. Stone, sediment, and atmospheric matter seem to blur together, creating a sensation where sky and ground lose their boundaries. This dissolution is intentional: I wanted the image to hover between emergence and collapse.

Color enters the work like a disturbance. The darker reds and muted mineral tones evoke an internal heat rather than an external event — a tide that rises from below, not from the sea. It is less about water than about pressure, weight, and transformation.

Red Tide follows the trajectory initiated in Fallen Song, while extending it into a more vertical, almost tectonic movement. Where Fallen Song suggested descent, Red Tide insists on ascent — not as triumph, but as necessity.

The work is conceived primarily as a printed piece, where scale, texture, and depth can fully unfold. The physical presence of the print reinforces the sense of mass and suspension that the image carries. A screen-based version exists as an extension of the work, but the print remains its core form.

Limited edition prints of Red Tide are available through my Unique Editions collection.

You can also view my work on Singulart:
https://www.singulart.com/en/artworks/denis-leclerc-red-tide-2501040
.

Abstract digital artwork by Denis Leclerc titled Digital Fragments 420, featuring layered textures in cream, slate, rose, and black tones from the Ethereal Solid series.

Digital Fragments 420

Posted on | by Denis

Exploring Gesture, Erosion, and Visual Tension

Digital Fragments 420 expands the Ethereal Solid series with a dense and shifting composition. Layers twist and blur, creating tension between weight and lightness. As the image unfolds, the piece pushes digital abstraction toward a state of collapse. Moreover, it also joins the wider field of contemporary digital art, where gesture, code, and material illusion meet.

Material Tension

Subtle greys, faded blush, bone white, and deep black build a muted palette. These tones evoke the sensation of fabric, skin, or rock, yet they remain elusive in terms of a clear identity. In fact, illusion replaces solidity. What appears to be physical texture is shaped through layers of digital mark-making. Therefore, the contrast between surface and illusion gives the work its energy.

 Challenging Decorative Abstraction

Unlike many digital works, this one resists smoothness. Instead, it breaks expectations without rejecting beauty. Its appeal lies in fracture and erosion, not gloss. Consequently, it fits into a current of abstraction that values friction over polish. This image chooses deliberately ambiguity over clarity.

Digital Fragments 420 and Its Work In Progress Origins

The first version appeared in Work In Progress – Digital Fragments 420. While some of that raw energy remains. The final piece doesn’t resolve it. Rather, it holds on to the idea of becoming. As a result, this openness defines the Ethereal Solid
series — each image stays incomplete, a captured fragment.

Digital Fragments 420 in Motion

In this version, the animation extends the visual language of Digital Fragments 420, unfolding its textures through time. Gentle pulses and shifting layers reveal new tensions embedded in the image. What appears still in print begins to breathe on screen.

This is not a secondary adaptation but an integral dimension of the work. Each piece in the Ethereal Solid series is conceived for digital environments — not only to be viewed on screens, but to inhabit them. In line with recent currents in screen-based art and post-Internet aesthetics, these fragments resist objecthood. They behave more like presences than products: animated, ambient, temporal.

In this context, animation is not about narrative. It is about materiality. Motion becomes a form of digital mark-making, echoing the gestures of painting but suspended in code. This hybrid state — between static image and temporal experience — defines the visual tension at the heart of Digital Fragments 420.

Print Formats

This piece is available in three sizes through the Unique Editions – Dimension Collection. Each print is produced on museum-grade Hahnemühle paper using Giclée technology:

  • Miniature Marvel – 12 in wide, variable height – 504 $
  • Grand Gesture – 24 in wide, variable height – 1024 $
  • Monumental Piece – 36 in wide, variable height – 1924 $
Work in progress image of Digital Fragments 420 by Denis Leclerc, early stage of an abstract composition with a central void, fragmented forms, and layered pale and dark textures.

Work In Progress 3

Posted on | by Denis

Work in Progress – Digital Fragments 420

Digital Fragments 420, a work-in-progress, draws on an unexpected source: The Women of Amphissa by Lawrence Alma-Tadema. I deliberately borrowed the palette from this late academic painting—ashen whites, rosy browns, steel blues—and re-injected it into a fully abstract composition.

A dynamic emerged early on: an almost organic void at the centre, around which the forms seem to drift or disintegrate. This visual hollow interests me — it acts as a counterpoint, a negation of the full.

Another phenomenon holds my attention: the bands of white at the bottom of the image. They play an ambiguous role — at times a plane of light, at other times a surface of rejection. Depending on the viewer’s gaze, they can shift toward an overexposed background, creating an unstable spatial illusion.

The more I look at this piece, the more I sense an underlying chaos. Nothing feels fully resolved. Fragmented forms orbit, hesitate, unravel. The white areas themselves seem poised to invade the space or withdraw abruptly. This tension feels essential. It also unexpectedly echoes specific passages in Borduas’ work, not as a quotation, but in the way white can act as a living, breathing material within the pictorial field.

Reflection in progress

This painting by Lawrence Alma-Tadema was not a direct reference when I began this fragment. However, it resurfaced during a recent reading, and I found myself drawn back to its textures — the veils, the fabrics, the skin rendered with such precision. I wondered whether these tactile qualities might serve as a starting point for an abstract exploration.

I must also admit: the technical mastery of Alma-Tadema remains impressive. Yet my intent was not to replicate or quote. Rather, I sought to transpose the sensory density of those textures — their softness, their layered presence — into a new visual language. Through this fragment, I am testing how much of that material resonance can survive when the figurative scaffolding is removed.

The white already speaks to you — listen to what it refuses, and to what it offers. It is neither background nor form: it is a threshold. If it repels, let it repel fully. If it draws in, let it draw in. The central void, the underlying chaos, the bands of white — all these are part of the same inverted breath. Let the instability breathe. Borduas is not a model, but a reminder that chaos itself can be a material.

— Ego Klar