removed the hand of the artist. Digitally manipulated nearly to the point of abstraction, the hugely stretched, pixilated grin of a Cheshire cat is just barely discernible.

As the capabilities of the software and hardware increased and he became more conversant with the technology, Newman’s work kept pushing the envelope. Works such as Peripheral Vision and Blind Spot, both from 1990, present heavily manipulated imagery — captured, distorted, colorized, and then painted onto canvas. It is interesting to consider these paintings, whose titles and subject explicitly invoke the mechanics of vision, in relation to the history of anamorphic imagery in art. The most famous example of such imagery is Hans Holbein the Younger’s Jean de Dinteville and George de Selve (The Ambasadors), 1533, which includes a distorted skull elongated and tilted across the foreground. The skull can be identified only when the painting is viewed at a highly oblique angle. Other works with anamorphic elements have historically required the use of mirrors, mirrored cylinders, or other technological tricks in order to decipher their distorted imagery. Newman’s paintings present the inverse — technology is used to create the visual trick rather than to decode it — and the transfigured image is intended to be the aesthetic result. However, if one views Newman’s painting at a steep enough angle, the images resolve themselves into undistorted originals, just as Holbein’s skull does.

By the late nineties, Newman was using morphing software, a byproduct of high-end special-effects programs, to make paintings in which he morphed his own face or the faces of family members with each other, or with animals, in a kind of visually based genetic recombination. Anne/Bill, 1998, shows Newman’s face morphed with that of his wife. Painted in black and white, the picture evokes a nostalgic past that is belied by its disturbing appearance. In the “Cracked Glass” and “EIEIO” series of 1998-99, Newman morphed himself with various species—an ape, a fish, a horse, and his beloved French bulldog, Poppy. The images are vaguely disturbing but present a clearly sympathetic view of the animal world, with Newman casting himself as a virtual menagerie.

One of the most significant aspects of Newman’s work has been his synthesis of cutting-edge technology with an abiding commitment to the traditional processes of painting. In this, he has managed to strike a fine balance, embracing the ever-changing new technology while paradoxically holding it at arm’s length. For Newman, digital imaging is a tool, a means to an end in his ongoing dialogue with the historical conventions of painting, rather than an end in itself.

Newman’s unique balancing act is evident in series such as “Skylights,” painted in the mid-nineties. These canvases are almost entirely about the pursuit of beauty, the exploration of color, and the interplay of light and shadow. The computer was used to colorize, spin, and project the images, but then technological manipulation was left behind in favor of handcrafted technique. Newman returned, as always, to the laborious method of color glazing over imprimatura, applying layer after layer of translucent color over monochromatic underpaintings. The alchemy of the glaze (or “the medium,” as Newman refers to it) — pigment, beeswax, lead, and linseed oil cooked for two and a half hours until it reaches 485 degrees — speaks to the historic lineage of the method. The translucent effects that can be achieved with this traditional technique continue to fascinate Newman. Without this medium, he has said, “I probably wouldn’t have become a painter.”

With The Keys, 1999-2000, Newman seems to have reached a point of perfect balance, the apogee of his integration of technology and process. One image is a black-and-white

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