Evolution

I started with a piece of art that I created the other day. I kept looking at it with great pleasure. It is called “Chasing the Setting Sound.”

Chasing the Setting Sound

From a T-Shirt to Unbound Energy

I didn’t begin this as “fine art.”

I began it the way a lot of visual ideas begin in real life —
thinking like a T-shirt design.

A strong image.
Immediate impact.
Something that could live on the body, move through the world, and be understood without explanation.

That instinct comes from growing up with album covers, posters, and shirts that carried meaning without asking permission. Images that were bold, emotional, and lived with you — not hung behind glass.

That was the first form.

Wearable image.

Stage One: The Wearable Image

The early image was direct:
a hand on a guitar, energy visible, color doing the work emotion usually does.

It wasn’t meant to be polite or restrained.
It was meant to hit — the way music hits before you think about it.

At this stage, the image was doing exactly what a shirt or an album cover does best:
communicating fast, emotionally, and honestly.

But something about the shape still felt contained.

Floating Form.

Stage Three: Floating in Black

In black space, the image changed again.

Without a frame, without context, without utility, the piece became quieter — but more intense. The color and motion had nowhere to escape to. They had to hold their own.

This version felt closest to how music exists:
invisible, immersive, and uncontained.

But something was still missing.

Not explanation — recognition

Declared Presence.

Stage Four: Returning With Language

The final shift was unexpected, but inevitable.

The piece returned to its origin —
the album cover, the T-shirt, the declarative statement —
but this time with everything it had learned along the way.

The words UNBOUND ENERGY didn’t describe the image.
They completed it.

The type breaks the way sound breaks.
It doesn’t sit politely under the image — it fractures, carries force, and absorbs impact.

This became the third form of the work:
not just image,
not just object,
but image plus declaration.

What I Realized Along the Way

This process helped me recognize something important about my work.

I’m not interested in choosing between beauty and meaning.
I’m interested in proving they belong together.

The visual language of T-shirts and album covers taught my generation how to see. That language is fast, emotional, and beautiful — and it’s capable of carrying real weight.

This piece traces that path:
from wearable image,
to floating form,
to declared presence.

It isn’t an ending.
It’s a recognition of where I stand — and where the work wants to go next.

—

UNBOUND ENERGY