Home Sweet Home by Hervé Perdriel

Is there a more beautiful and evocative word than "home?"Perhaps "love" or "family?"But there are not many, our cover artist is inclined to say.Home Sweet Home is part of a series meant to represent months of the year.Herv Perdriel wanted to convey a different atmosphere or sentiment in every representation, and this one was designed for October or November.He felt that fall was a time when people in many countries stayed home more often, cherishing interior life as the season changed and colder weather arrived.Home Sweet Home has a painterly quality with hints of Miro and Chagall, even Dali, but it was not produced with brush and pigment on canvas or paper.It is digital art, all done on a computer with software.Perdriel likens his method to that of a hip hop or "techno" musician who composes by sampling, copying, and modifying parts of others' work and combining them to make something new.He does not draw or paint anything and indeed never took classes or developed the traditional skills of the studio artist.Instead, Perdriel scrolls through websites looking for interesting images in traditional painting, photography, and the visual record of life, past and present.These elements from scattered sources are then organized, collagelike, into pictures.He even uses artificial intelligence to generate imagery in the style of great artists and then selects the elements that fit well with his own vision.Some compositions remain as digital screen art, but others become three dimensional, printed on paper or fabric.Does knowing how the cover piece was produced change how it is perceived?Remember that the artistry is in the selection and arrangement of elements not in the craft of their original creation.Why then was a woman chosen as the central figure in Home Sweet Home?It was because, otherwise, according to Perdriel, the picture would be too obviously autobiographical, too obviously him.The artist preferred to be hidden.And perhaps the figure is female, he adds, in memory of a time when he was without a partner and missed a woman's presence.The setting and background