Wilderness examined and Landscapes approached as records of use, intervention, and translation
My work explores as my gesture becomes locked in tension with systems of constraint
Dawn, Dusk and Midday - Digitally Processed Image, Archival Inkjet on Canvas with Attached 3D print of digitally remixed Deer Skull, Diptych, 30 x 48, 2023
Systemic and Mechanical Intervention
Tourist Intervention - Digitally Processed Image, 4 Colour Tempera Print on Yupo Paper, Edition - 7/14, 17 x 11, 2024
Tourist Intervention - Digitally Processed Image, 4 Colour Tempera Print on Yupo Paper, Edition - 3/14, 17 x 11, 2024
Field and Capture
Rouge River Power - Digitally Processed Image, Laser-etched Enamel on Aluminum, 48 x 24, 2024
Crothers Woods - Digitally Processed Image, Laser-etched Enamel on Aluminum, 48 x 24, 2024
This image passes through digital preparation and machine-controlled etching before re-entering the work through material response. Precision and error coexist, forming a field of pressures in which authorship and control remain deliberately unstable
Translation and Mediation
Island Conversation - Distressed Antique Effect Loop, Cyanotype of AI assisted digital drawing, 10" x 10", 2023
Island Conversation, AI assisted digital drawing, 14" x 14", 2022
Desert Conversation at the River - Distressed Antique Effect Loop, Cyanotype of AI assisted digital drawing, 10" x 10", 2022
Desert Conversation at the River, AI assisted digital drawing, 14" x 14", 2022
Generated through AI-assisted landscape drawing and retranslated using cyanotype chemistry, this work traces a lineage from early photographic inscription to contemporary image synthesis. From Talbot’s "The Pencil of Nature" to mass media and networked circulation, photographic technologies have steadily expanded their capacity to shape belief at scale. Cyanotype reintroduces exposure and material contingency into images derived from vast photographic datasets, holding visible the pressures between historical process, computational synthesis, and contemporary modes of persuasion.
Hydro Corridor, Digitally Processed Image, Laser-etched Enamel on Aluminum, 24" x 48", 2019
John Deal is a Canadian visual artist working across painting, photography, printmaking, animation, and digitally assisted processes. His work examines landscapes as records of intervention, adaptation, and memory rather than untouched wilderness. Through hybrid methods that combine human gesture with rule-based and mechanical systems, Deal constructs a field of pressures in which agency, authorship, responsibility, and belief are produced, diffused, and obscured through aesthetic systems, inviting sustained scrutiny rather than resolution.
Influenced by early experiences in the protected landscapes of the Bruce Peninsula and informed by posthumanist thinking, Deal turns to environments already shaped by use. Fields marked by agriculture, forests punctuated by infrastructure, and paths worn through repetition are approached as living archives of human and non-human interaction. His process begins with immersive fieldwork through hiking, observation, and documentation in environments shaped by visible change.
Across all media, his work negotiates the relationship between deliberate human action and systems that impose constraints, whether technological, procedural, or environmental. Images move through cycles of observation, translation, and material re-entry, accumulating decisions rather than resolving them. Precision and contingency coexist across the surface, a tension gently soothed by gilded surfaces and technicoloured palettes, even as the underlying friction remains intact. The viewer is positioned within this unresolved exchange, asked to consider not only what is seen, but how agency, authorship, and control are being distributed in the act of looking.
Castles in the Sky Conversation, AI assisted digital drawing, 14" x 14", 2022
Mountain Conversation, AI assisted digital drawing, 14" x 14", 2022
Eleventh Road Barrier, 2018, Digitally Processed Image, Laser-Etched Enamel on Aluminum, 48" x 24"
Hysert Bridge, 2013, Digitally Processed Image, Laser-Etched Enamel on Aluminum, 48" x 24"
Windmill and Field, 2015, Digitally Processed Image, Laser-Etched Enamel on Aluminum, 12" x 48"
Unravelled Inversion, 2020, Digitally Processed Image, Archival Inkjet on Organza, 47" x 17"
Hysert Pair, 2015, Digitally Processed Image, Laser-Etched Enamel on Aluminum, 48" x 24"
Power Transmission Towers, 2015, Digitally Processed Image, Laser-Etched Enamel on Aluminum, 12" x 48"
Landscape with Dead wood and Deer, 2013, Digitally Processed Image, Laser-Etched Enamel on Aluminum, 48" x 24"
Tenth Road Quarry, 2012, Digitally Processed Image, Laser-Etched Enamel on Aluminum, 48" x 24"
Hysert Crossing, 2012, Digitally Processed Image, Laser-Etched Enamel on Aluminum, 12" x 48"
Transfer Station, 2012, Digitally Processed Image, Laser-Etched Enamel on Aluminum, 48" x 24"
In Bloom, 2012, Digitally Processed Image, Laser-Etched Enamel on Aluminum, 48" x 24"
Windmill and Farm (in White), 2015, Digitally Processed Image,Laser-etched Gesso on Panel, 12" x 12"
Lost Windmill Removed, 2016, Digitally Processed Image, Laser-cut and etched Stonehenge Paper, 20" x 13 3/4"
Deer Trail, 2013, Digitally Processed Image, Laser-etched Enamel on Aluminum, 12" x 48"
