About Short
I am Jon - born in south London, residing in East Devon, southwest England with my wife.
CURVEBALL is a moniker for my music and art compositions, borne from a serious life curveball.
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The idea to create a work of art for each published music work led me into designing digital artworks, multi-influenced by my passion for Seurat, Riley, Rothko, Richter and many others, as well as my geometric and colour-centric brain!
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CURVEBALL art is abstract, patterned, minimalistic, and at times optical, though not all at the same time and created using Actual Intelligence.​​
About CURVEBALL Art
​CURVEBALL art has been created using Actual Intelligence.​​
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It was borne from an obvious desire to have artwork for the albums and individual tracks. The main streaming platform I use is BandCamp which has thumbnails allowing for designs associated with the tracks.
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I started releasing EPs and they were named WON, TOO, FREE and FOR.
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The main artwork for WON, TOO and FOR was provided by my great photographer friend, James Aitken. Gratitude goes to D'Arcy Gue for permitting CURVEBALL to use her extraordinary artwork Garden of Eden: Reflection as the cover art for FREE.
The early works in the portfolio #1 - 22 correlate to all 22 tracks of the eponymous CURVEBALL album.
As the portfolio has grown, there has been a trend towards an abstract aesthetic. I'm not entirely sure why.
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Perhaps it's because I'm not entirely happy with my own reality, or that of mankind and the planet in general. Most of the works emanate from photography and experimentation. Photographs are abstracted, often beyond recognition, stylised or made surreal. Some people who have seen my art are fascinated with what it is. Does it mean something? How did he do it? Of course others are not fascinated!
This harmonises with my music and its 'sine voce' character. I love the Felix Mendelssohn quote:
"People usually complain that music is so ambiguous, that it leaves them in such doubt as to what they are supposed to think, whereas words can be understood by everyone. But to me it seems exactly the opposite."
I personally love immersive music and art that doesn't have a programmed meaning. It is unambiguous, allowing for self-interpretation. Perhaps that's why abstraction is important to me.
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