Painting the digital river

This paper recounts the rationale and process of writing a book on digital painting, the coming together of computer graphics and contemporary art. As both a digital and a 'physical' painter, I felt there were fascinating possibilities the practitioner comes across, but these implications were being overlooked. There is a view that 'new media' will simply replace 'traditional media', like painting. I intended to show that a painter can 'go digital' and yet remain quite obviously a painter. There had to be a balance between the detailed discussion of computer graphics and the detail of painting: the techniques, the histories, the continuing debates, in a way that would bring it alive to a wider readership. The title, 'Painting the Digital River', is a metaphor for what divides the territory, for the co-existence of change and continuity, and for the journey of discovery.