WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. In computing, a WYSIWYG editor is a system in which content (text and graphics) can be edited in a form closely resembling its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product.
When working on a computer, despite being able to see the document or image on-screen with a similar appearance to the one you get when you print, there are many ephemeral signs that temporarily coexist on-screen, which are only visible within the images and documents we work with. These elements are only seen during the working process and never transcend their virtual location: ruler guides, margin lines, vector paths, selection areas, pointers, anchor points, backgrounds without image, picture boxes, distortions, underlines, highlighted copy edits…
Being even stricter with the meaning of WYSIWIG, I have painted precisely what I see, but nonetheless I never get as a physical image. Each piece is an oil painting of these graphics and virtual schemes that I have seen during the execution of documents, generated within software designed for text and image editing (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator and Word).
Every transfer involves a loss, and in the case of turning an image-screen into image-matter, change occurs both in the translation of colour-light to colour-pigment and within the disappearance of the graphic skeleton, which in spite of its flashy presence on the screen, usually goes unnoticed.
The pieces of WYSIWYG rescue these forgotten drawings, being materialised beyond an inkjet or laser print, occupying a medium that is traditionally used for images that are intended to remain: oil painting —a technique that began to be used toward the end of the Middle Ages and throughout the Renaissance, when the perspective and the idea of the painting as a window were developed.
