Taylor White

I had done this “Cowboys and Indians” set for my Every Nice Thing exhibition back in May, but they haven’t seen the light of day for a while because I had felt like the end product lacked a certain amount of enthusiasm. It always left me with a sense of unease – like I’d been paying unnecessary neglect to a couple of benignly flawed relatives – and I’d always hoped I’d be able to pull them from the ashes one day or another. Over the years I’ve acquired a backlog of unfinished ideas, rejected sketches, and unsatisfactory finished work, and I’ve found that despite the urge to trash everything I don’t like, it’s always good to hang on to the old stuff so that it can be recycled later. Here’s a perfectly good example.

Over the weekend I wanted to do some experiments with displacement mapping in Photoshop and needed some source material. After a couple of hours, a bit of tinkering with layer masks and color adjustments, the story of these two estranged playmates can finally be told.

>Cowboys & Indians No. 1. 9 x 14.5 inches @300 dpi, 2011

>Cowboys & Indians No. 2. 9 x 14.5 inches @300 dpi, 2011